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OLD PARIS 



WORKS OF 
HENRY C. SHELLEY 

0?<I 

Inns and Taverns of - - 

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3ll0 i^orial, Iftatnnral, attb 
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Including an Account of the Famous Cabarets, 

Hotels, Cafes, Salons, Clubs, Pleasure Gardens, 

Fairs and Fetes, and the Theatres of the 

French Capital in Bygone Times. 



Author of " Inns and Taverns of Old London," " The 
British Museum : Its History and Treasures," etc. 



MiuBttuUh 




L. C PAGE & COMPANY 
BOSTON 3^ ^ MDCCCCXII 



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Copyright, 1912, 

By L. C. Page & Company. 

(incorporated) 

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First Impression, July, 1912 



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© O 



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PEEFACE 

Reading in a French newspaper that some twelve 
thousand English people were in Paris, a London 
scribe made the angry comment: '' Such eagerness 
to visit a capital not too remarkable for the moral- 
ity and decency its various societies exhibit, is more 
to the advantage of our sneering neighbours than to 
our national character. ' ' 

That charming example of British insularity was 
written more than a century ago; in 1802, to be 
exact; and hence at a time when the achievements 
of Napoleon were sorely trying the nerves of John 
Bull. Notwithstanding, however, that the relations 
of the two nations were in a highly strained condi- 
tion, there were still some twelve thousand English 
people who were unable to resist the fascination of 
the French capital. Such a fact is eloquent of the 
attractiveness of Paris. But, as the following pages 
will demonstrate, that was nothing new. From the 
time when Europeans began to travel no capital was 
so potent a lodestone to the pleasure-seeker. And 
the explanation is written at large in the ensuing 
chapters, for tliey offer many convincing proofs of 
Horace "Walpole's assertion that the Parisian 
passed his days in '^ perpetual opera." 

vU 



viii Preface 

Owing to the repeated transformation of the 
aspect of Paris, and the bewildering frequency of 
changes in the names of the streets, it has been 
thought best to adhere in the main to that broad 
topographical division of the city for which the 
Seine is responsible. This simple classification is 
the more excusable because practically all the inns, 
taverns, cafes, pleasure-gardens, theatres, and other 
buildings figuring in this book have been demolished. 
It is an exploration in the spirit, then, and not in 
the body, to which the reader is invited. 

H. c. s. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface vii 

I. Old Paris 1 

II. Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank ... 31 

III. Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank ... 63 

IV. Cafes of the Left Bank 96 

V. Cafes of the Right Bank 127 

VI. The Salons 179 

VII. The Clubs 207 

VIII. Pleasure Gardens 240 

IX. Street Characters ' . . 271 

X. Fairs and Fetes 283 

XI. The Theatres 315 

Selected Bibliography 347 

Index 349 



The author wishes to ac- 
knowledge his indebted- 
ness to Sir Sidney Colvin, 
of the British Museum, 
and to the Director of 
the Carnavalet Musee, 
at Paris, through whose 
courtesy he was given ac- 
cess to many rare prints, 
otherwise unobtainable, 
reproductions of which 
form the greater part of 
the illustrations of this 
volume. 



LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS 



PAQB 



Guests fob the Old Hotels — Interior of an Old Coach- 
ing Inn Frontispiece i^ 

The Englishman in Paris in the Eighteenth Century . 6 i^ 

The Fete Dieu • . . 8 '^ 

A Side - STREET Cabaret: The White Rabbit . . . 20*' 

Francois Rabelais 34 '^ 

A Students' Tavern in the Latin Quarter . . . 39*" 

A Parisian Coach of the Eighteenth Century . . 40 ^^ 

Voltaire 44 "^ 

Jean Jacques Rousseau 48 - 

The Turret Hotel 63 ' 

Scene outside The Wooden Sword 68 "^ 

Ramponeau's Tavern 72 v^ 

Charlotte Cord ay 78 -' 

Death of Marat 80 

Denis Diderot lll"^ 

Henry Murger 116 ly^ 

Restaurant Tourelle 122 V 

A Saloon in the Regency Cafe 132 ^' 

Camille Desmoulins outside the Cafe Foy . . . 138 ^ 

Assassination of Lepelletier in Fevrier's Restaurant 141 ^ 

Outside Tortoni's 152 1^ 

The Cafe Riche 155 i/ 

Early Nineteenth Century Cafes on the Place du 

Chatelet 165 

The Cafe Momus 172 ''''^ 

The Marriage of Mme. de Maintenon to Louis XIV . 195 ly 

Jean Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert 198 i/ 

xi 



xii List of Illustrations 



FAGD 



A Salon of the Eighteenth Century . . . . 200 ^ 

Mme. d'Epinay 206 

Meeting - PLACE of the Jacobins Club .... 212^ 

Maximilien Marie Isidore Robespierre .... 215^ 

Meeting - PLACE of the Feuillants Club .... 222' 

Frascati's Gambling Club 226'^ 

A Caricature of the Literary Club 233^ 

The Cmcus of the Palais Royal 241^ 

Entrance to Beaumarchais' Garden — Garden of the 

Palais Royal , . 264'' 

The Tuileries Gardens . 266 ■ 

Scene on the Pont Neuf 272*^ 

A Mountebank of the Eighteenth Century . . . 275/ 

The Psalm -singer 276v^ 

The Public Letter - writer 279 . 

The Fair OF St. OviDE 298 

Fete of the Federation . . 309 . 

Fete of the Tenth of August 311 »^ 

Fete of the Supreme Being . . . . . . . 313 «^ 

The King of the Basochians 320 ^ 

Theatrical Performance in the Hall of the Louvre . 329 ^ 

Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere 332 ■ ' 

Comedie Francaise on the Night op Voltaire's Apothe- 
osis . .' 340 t^ 



OLD PAEIS 

CHAPTEE I 

OLD PAEIS 

" Old Paris " is a protean term. It may mean 
the Paris of Hugh Capet, or the Paris of the first 
Napoleon. Indeed, if that is old which has ceased to 
exist, large sections of the Paris of the third Napo- 
leon might be included in the category. 

For the capital of France has suffered from 
friends and enemies alike. No doubt there are thou- 
sands who will agree with Lytton's young noble, the 
Marquis de Rochebriant, when he confessed ''it is 
what is new in Paris that strikes and enthrals me," 
but the other thousands who find much to fascinate 
in the lighter side of the life of bygone generations 
will regret that so much of interest has wholly dis- 
appeared. Victor Hugo had the right spirit. When, 
at the time plans were being discussed for the recon- 
struction of the Rue de Rivoli, some iconoclast pro- 
posed pulling down the Tour St. Jacques, the novel- 
ist exclaimed: 

" Demolish the Tour St. Jacques! No! Demol- 
ish the architect who made the suggestion ! ' ' 



2 Old Paris 

Such indignation was natural in the author of 
' ' Notre Dame. ' ' The Paris he knew best and loved 
most was the Paris of the fifteenth century. At that 
period it was, he affirmed, not a fine city only, but a 
homogeneous city, " an architectural and historical 
production of the Middle Ages — a chronicle in 
stone. ' ' 

Nay, Victor Hugo's admiration for old Paris 
was not restricted to the Middle Ages. It extended 
to the period of the Renaissance. If less harmoni- 
ous in those days, the city was, perhaps, still more 
beautiful. But there the novelist stopped; with the 
dying out of the influence of the Renaissance, beauty 
and harmony were both set at naught. In the heter- 
ogeneous Paris of his own day he saw but two build- 
ings worthy of praise, the Tuileries and the Hotel- 
de-Ville ; the remainder were specimens of different 
ages, and the capital was so quickly increasing in 
jerry-built houses as to prompt a Parisian to ex- 
claim, ' ' Our fathers had a Paris of stone — our sons 
will have one of plaster." And then the novelist, it 
will be remembered, proceeded to dismiss the struc- 
tures of his day as '^ the finest Savoy cake ever made 
of stone," " a very distinguished piece of pastry," 
and so on. 

Had Victor Hugo, however, been suddenly called 
upon to live his daily life in that old Paris which he 
extolled so highly, he might have found it necessary 
to qualify his enthusiasm. When regarded from the 



Old Paris 3 

comfortable environment of modern life ancient 
times are apt to acquire a roseate line not entirely in 
accordance with fact. That the French capital has 
for so many centuries proved a magnet to natives of 
other cities cannot, at any rate, be explained in the 
terms of architecture. Stones are a wretched sub- 
stitute for bread anywhere. 

Perhaps, then, the dark side of the picture should 
be presented first, especially as even Montaigne ad- 
mitted that Paris had " her spots, her blemishes, 
and her warts. ' ' 

According to a native historian, the houses of 
Paris in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 
were nothing better than cottages ; only four streets 
in the city were paved ; and they were very narrow 
and dirty, and often inundated by the Seine. Some 
of those conditions persisted for many generations. 
Take, for example, the report of James Howell in 
the second decade of the seventeenth century. 

Although admitting that Paris was the " rendez- 
vous of all foreigners " and that the buildings were 
" indifferently fair," he added that the streets were 
* ' generally foul ' ' at all seasons of the year, ' ' which 
I impute," he continued, " first to the position of 
the city being built upon an isle (the Isle of France, 
made so by the branching and serpentine course of 
the river of Seine), and having some of her suburbs 
seated high, the filth runs down the channel and 
settles in many places within the body of the city, 



4 Old Paris 

which lieth upon a flat; as also for a world of 
coaches, carts, and horses of all sorts that go to and 
fro perpetually. . . . Hence it comes to pass that 
this town (for Paris is a town, a city, and a Univer- 
sity) is always dirty, and it is such a dirt, that by 
perpetual motion it is beaten into such a thick black 
unctuous oil that where it sticks no art can wash it 
off of some colours, insomuch that it may be no 
improper comparison to say, that an ill name is like 
the crot (the dirt) of Paris, which is indelible; be- 
sides the stain this dirt leaves, it gives also so strong 
a scent that it may be smelt many miles off if the 
wind be in one's face as he comes from the fresh air 
of the country." 

Sixty years later a brief passage in a gossipy let- 
ter from the French capital gives a vivid glimpse 
of another discomfort of life in Paris. '' I do not 
think the colds can be greater in Muscovie than they 
have been here for now almost three months. The 
night before last twenty people were found dead in 
several streets of this city, and scarce a night pass- 
eth without seven or eight being found starved, 
though all the day great fires are made almost in 
every street." 

Poverty and misery, too, were rife in the city 
when Matthew Prior went thither as a diplomat in 
1698 ; and the streets were still so narrow that when 
a friend stopped his coach to speak with him a hun- 
dred other coaches were brought to a standstill until 



Old Paris 5 

the interview was over. Nor were conditions im- 
proved when Horace Walpole visited the city in 
1765. He exclaimed upon the dirt and the narrow- 
ness of the streets, while Lapland was in " the tor- 
rid zone in comparison of Paris." The wealthy, it 
appeared, were little better off than those poor folk 
who froze to death notwithstanding the " great 
fires " in the streets. " We have had such a frost 
for this fortnight," Walpole wrote, " that I went 
nine miles to dine in the country to-day, in a villa 
exactly like a greenhouse, except that there was no 
fire but in one room. We were four in a coach, and 
all our chinks stopped with furs, and yet all the 
glasses were frozen. We dined in a paved hall 
painted in fresco, with a fountain at one end; for, 
in this country, they live in perpetual opera, and 
persist in being young when they are old, and hot 
when they are frozen." As he wrote, Walpole was 
so benumbed that he had to pause at every sentence 
to breathe upon his fingers. 

Voltaire, however, told quite another story. He 
boasted that a citizen of Paris was surrounded by 
more luxury than a Koman general returning in tri- 
umph to the Oapitol, and expatiated in glowing 
terms upon the thousands of lamps which illumi- 
nated the city, and the cleanliness of its streets, and 
the good order which prevailed. 

And yet in 1787, some ten years after Voltaire's 
death, all the old complaints were repeated once 



6 Old Paris 

more. According to the testimony of Arthur Young, 
the streets were as narrow as ever, and as crowded 
with coaches, and as dirty. Walking was a '^ toil 
and a fatigue to a man, and an impossibility to a 
well-dressed woman." There were no sidewalks, 
and the pungent and indelible mud of Howell 's days 
was still abundant. Nor was this the prejudiced 
verdict of a foreigner. A native of the city ex- 
pressed, two years later than Young, his amazement 
that so many abuses were allowed to exist — that 
the streets had no pavements, that lamps were unlit 
and that the infiltrations of cesspools polluted the 
air. In fact, even so late as 1826, Sydney Smith 
complained that Paris was badly lit at night and 
that the lack of sidewalks was a great evil. 

Yet, and this is an amazing thing in the history 
of great cities, Paris has held a supreme position 
among the capitals of Europe for many centuries. 
Notwithstanding those serious disadvantages con- 
cerning which there is a surprising unanimity — 
despite its arctic winter climate, its cramped streets, 
its evil-odoured mud, its crowded and ill-lit thor- 
oughfares, no other city has been such a '' rendez- 
vous of all foreigners." That it should be " the 
pole, the axis, the centre, his all " for the French- 
man, as Amiel declared, is not surprising; Mon- 
taigne, though the dirt of Paris lessened his ' ' kind- 
ness," avowed that the city captured his heart in his 
infancy, and '' the more beautiful cities I have seen 



Old Paris 7 

since, tlie more the beauty of this still wins npon my 
affection; " what is more significant, because disin- 
terested, is that the natives of other lands, and nota- 
bly the insular English, equally admit the spell of 
the famous city. 

In fact, every witness already cited for the prose- 
cution can be recalled for the defence. The mud- 
stained Howell, besides hailing Paris as the " ren- 
dezvous of all foreigners," admitted the city to be 
" sumptuous and strong; " that chronicler of street 
bonfires and frozen wayfarers voted the snuff of 
Paris to be '' the best; " Walpole confessed '' there 
is a douceur in the society of the women of fashion 
that captivates me; " Arthur Young, at the end of 
his grumbling, admitted the French capital to be " a 
most eligible residence for such as prefer a great 
city; " and Sydney Smith's conclusion was that as 
between London and Paris " there is not the small- 
est possibility of a comparison." 

Most, indeed, of the faultfinders provide their 
own antidote. Thus, a somewhat puritanical Eng- 
lish visitor of the year 1682, after assuring his 
father that the '' great feast de bon Dieu " was cal- 
culated to win as many from popery as " their 
wheedling priests can gain in a whole year," added 
that he had not time to describe the great variety 
of the city's " divertisements. " If much research 
does disclose the case of another Englishman who 
found Paris ' ' dull ' ' in the early eighteenth century. 



8 Old Paris 

he explains the reason when he adds that the play- 
houses and other places of amusement were closed 
owing to a religious celebration. 

Countless other witnesses testify with unqualified 
enthusiasm. There is Montesquieu, for example, 
who, by the pen of his Persian observer, character- 
ized Paris as " the most luxurious city in the world,'* 
and, in his own person, confessed that he could not 
visit it for a year at least because he had not suf- 
ficient money to participate in its pleasures. An- 
other acclaimed the capital as '' the finest theatre 
in the world ; " a third voted the Parisians as indif- 
ferent to everything except " pleasure and ease; " 
and even at the end of the seventeenth century a 
Sicilian visitor is made to declare that *' there is so 
much luxury here that whoever would wish to en- 
rich three hundred cities has only to destroy 
Paris." 

In bygone centuries, then, as in the present age, 
the capital of France was the mart and playground 
of the world. Not merely its snuff, but its wines, 
its jewels, its garments were the best. If a dandy 
returned to London gorgeously arrayed and be- 
decked, his wig made of wire, his buckles glittering 
with diamonds, the only conclusion possible was that 
he had been to Paris. If such an inveterate gambler 
as Charles James Fox wished to dissipate his inher- 
itance in the briefest possible time, he also crossed 
the English Channel. Even Samuel Johnson, though 



/ 
/ 







'1 V > >1 



>-^>"^ 



THE FETE DIEU. 



Old Paris 9 

he found Frencli meals '' gross '' and revolted at 
the idea that a footman should finger the sugar for 
his coffee, imagined himself ' ' growing young ' ' 
when in Paris. 

What was the secret of this charm which capti- 
vated all alike? Which made Howell forget the 
odours of Paris mud, bewitched the fastidious Wal- 
pole, placated the grumbling Young, and rejuve- 
nated the phlegmatic Johnson? Why has Paris at 
all times been so interesting to '' both the libertine 
and the philosopher? " 

Walpole supplies the answer in the letter quoted 
above. The Parisian lives in " perpetual opera " 
and persists in " being young when he is old." 
Faire bonne vie is his creed. Nothing is so impor- 
tant as to lead a merry life. Never was his faith in 
his creed so severely tested as at the time of the 
French Revolution. Yet it withstood even that as- 
say. A participant in those days of red terror 
assures us that it was no uncommon experience for 
him to be stopped in the street by an entire 
stranger, and gravely asked his opinion as to one or 
other of the tragic events then transpiring; but, 
before he could recover from his surprise at being 
thus abruptly accosted, his questioner would be off 
singing some popular ballad. No wonder he de- 
clared ' ' ether is not half so volatile as a Parisian. ' ' 
He mounted the guillotine scaffold with a hop, step, 
and a jump, took a pinch of snuff, cracked a joke 



10 Old Paris 

with the executioner, and died with a hon-mot on his 
lips. 

Paris, then, stands for the wine of life. Emerson 
was not surprised that young men found the free- 
dom of that city greatly to their liking. It has al- 
ways been the same. Reposing quietly among the 
ancient Latin letters in the archives of Canterhury 
Cathedral is a long epistle addressed to the prior of 
Christchurch in the thirteenth century. It was 
penned by one John Parent, a poor scholar of the 
monastery, who had been sent to Paris in pursuit of 
knowledge. But John, alas! had fallen a victim to 
the Parisian spirit; instead of attending to his 
books, he had been indulging in the pleasures of life ; 
and now some one has informed the prior, and the 
prior has stopped his allowance, and John pleads 
his poverty and attempts to recover the prior's 
favour by telling him of a wonderful book which has 
come under his notice. That was all six hundred 
years ago, but John's extremity would appeal to 
many a Latin Quarter student of the twentieth cen- 
tury. 

With his volatile nature, the Parisian is essen- 
tially gregarious. To live in a " perpetual opera " 
necessitates the company of his kind. And hence it 
comes to pass that life in Paris is intensely social. 
As a natural corollary there is no capital in the 
world, whether of ancient or modern times, where 
the inn and tavern and wine-shop, the cafe and res- 



Old Paris 11 

taurant, the dancing-hall and pleasure-garden, the 
club and salon and theatre have played so large a 
part in the life of the city. It has often been said 
that the history of Paris is the history of France; 
it is equally true that the history of the auherge and 
cabaret and cafe is the history of Paris. 

In what far-off year the first page of that history 
was written is unknown. One of the earliest dates 
in the chronology of Parisian conviviality is 1268, 
in which year statutes were framed for the more 
orderly regulation of the important art of brewing. 
This, of course, was in the reign of St. Louis, whose 
habit ol watering his wine was not to be taken as a 
precedent by the purveyors of beer. Indeed, the 
statutes were so stringent that the beer-drinkers of 
Paris in the thirteenth century were evidently pro- 
vided with an excellent article. It had, for one 
thing, to be free from all taint of sacrilege, inasmuch 
as no one was allowed to either brew beer or '' re- 
move it in drays ' ' on Sundays or feasts of the Vir- 
gin. Its ingredients, too, were to be honest and 
above suspicion, for '^ nothing shall enter into the 
composition of beer but good malt and hops, well 
gathered, picked, and cured, without any mixture of 
buck-wheat, darnel, etc., to which end the hops shall 
be inspected by juries to see that they are not used 
after being heated, mouldy, damp, or otherwise 
damaged." Further, no one was allowed to set up 
as a brewer until he had served a five years ' appren- 



12 Old Paris 

ticeship and another three years in partnership with 
an acknowledged master of the craft, while " beer 
yest brought by foreigners " had to be inspected by 
a jury before it could be exposed for sale. 

Perhaps, however, the most suggestive of these 
statutes is that which reads : " No beer shall be 
hawked about the streets, but shall all be sold in the 
brew-houses to bakers and pastry-cooks, and to no 
others. ' ' This would seem to indicate — though it 
is dangerous to found a generalization on a single 
law — that in 1268 the innkeeper as such did not 
exist in Paris. Perhaps, however, he already flour- 
ished but was under the necessity of buying his beer 
through a middleman. Or, on the other hand, the 
statute may have been designed to foster the excel- 
lent principle of combining eating with drinking. 
Whatever the facts were, it is a matter of record 
that the inn had made its appearance in Paris early 
in the fourteenth century. 

Appropriately enough, bearing in mind the scenes 
of lawlessness which were to be associated with its 
successors of later generations, one of the earliest 
Parisian hostelries of which there is record sur- 
vives in history through its connection with a dark 
deed of the early fourteenth century. The chief 
actors in this deed were an accomplished Flemish 
forger named Jeanne de Divion and Eobert, the 
grandson of Robert the second Count of Artois. 
When the latter was killed in battle in 1302 his 



Old Paris 13 

province of Artois, owing to his son Philip hav- 
ing predeceased him, was awarded to his daugh- 
ter Matilda, but Philip's son Robert was a stout 
believer in the principle of the Salic law and was 
not disposed to see his aunt take possession of 
Artois. At this juncture, then, he called Jeanne de 
Divion to his aid, and that adroit manipulator of 
documents proceeded to Paris to carry out such for- 
geries as would establish her employer's claim to 
the eountship of the province. Jeanne made her 
headquarters at the hostelry known as the Eagle, 
which was situated in the Rue Saint-Antoine and 
had for its overlords the brethren of the abbey of 
Saint-Maur-des-Fosses. 

So skilfully did Jeanne employ her art at the 
Eagle that the forged documents there produced 
gave rise to one of the most remarkable legal con- 
tests of the fourteenth century. The documents 
were specious enough to keep Matilda's inheritance 
in the balance for some years, for it was not until 
1322 that the plot was brought home to Robert and 
his accomplice. Whether, as one story has it, he 
was imprisoned but escaped, or was merely sen- 
tenced to banishment, is not of vital importance; 
what is clear is that the forgeries carried out in that 
ancient inn of Paris were fraught with far-reaching 
consequences. They were a moving cause, indeed, 
in the Hundred Years' War between Prance and 
England, for than the exiled and embittered Robert 



14 Old Paris 

of Artois no one did more to urge Edward III of 
England into that protracted conflict. 

What is true of most other cities, that the poets 
have liberally supplemented the labours of the 
topographers in preserving the history of inns and 
taverns, also holds good in the case of Paris. When 
to their references are added the chance allusions 
of such chroniclers as Froissart and the deliberate 
descriptions of anonymous satirists of social life 
it becomes possible to piece together a fairly com- 
prehensive picture of those old-time havens for 
'' man and beast." Enguerrand de Monstrelet, 
that ' ' very honourable and peaceable ' ' continuator 
of Froissart, confines himself to mentioning the 
names of four inns which were of good repute in 
the reign of Charles VI, that is, The Sword, The 
Bear, The Dry Tree, and The Fleur de Lys. These, 
perhaps, or some of them, were in the recollection 
of the poet Eustache Deschamps when, during his 
travels in Germany, he reflected with sorrow on the 
comfortable hostelries he had left behind in Paris. 
Evidently he did not get value for his money in Ger- 
many, and his afflictions were augmented by the 
stubbornness with which the Teutons refused to 
speak any language save their own. Hence these 
tears : 

" Princes, par la vierge Marie, 
On est, en la Cossonnerie, 
Aux Canetes ou aux Trois Rois, 



Old Paris 15 

Mieux servy en Vhostellerie, 

Car ces gens que je vous escrie 

La n'y parleront que thiois (allemand)." 

As will be seen, one of the inns which the poet 
compared with the German hostelries to the disad- 
vantage of the latter was named The Three Kings. 
That sign, which perpetuated of course the gospel 
legend of the three Eastern magi, persisted in Paris 
and throughout France for many centuries. Its re- 
tention at a time when the Revolution was at its 
height led to an amusing interchange between Dr. 
John Moore and a grave-looking man of whom he 
made an inquiry. '' He asked where I lodged. I 
answered, ' Aux Trois Rois. ' ' Aux Trois Rois ! ' 
he repeated with a grimace. ' Ma foi, monsieur, 
vous avez choisi Id des holes qui ne sont plus a la 
mode.' " 

Froissart has preserved the memory of an inn 
which must have been of considerable importance 
in his day. It was called The Straw Castle and was 
situated " in the road which they call the Croix-du- 
Tirouer. ' ' As the chronicler implies that The Straw 
Oastle was affected by Sir Thomas de Percy, that 
" gentle, reasonable, and gracious " knight who 
finally joined Hotspur in rebellion and paid the usual 
penalty, and was also the favourite resort of other 
powerful nobles, it was obviously far superior to the 
average inn of Paris. Evidently it was a superior 
example of that type which was created by the neces- 



16 Old Paris 

sity of providing suitable quarters for the numerous 
ambassadors constantly coming to the French court 
from England and other countries. 

Conspicuous among such inns in the sixteenth 
century was The Angel, conveniently situated in the 
Eue de la Huchette. It was at this house, in 1500, 
were entertained the ambassadors of the Emperor 
Maximilian to Louis XII, a fact which speaks elo- 
quently in its favour, for, at that time, the French 
monarch was anxious to secure the support of the 
Eoman sovereign. When they reached Paris the 
ambassadors were received with stately ceremonial 
by the mayor and merchants of the city, who con- 
ducted them to The Angel, which, says a historian, 
" was very fine for those times." Half a century 
later the house still retained its high reputation, for 
it was specially chosen by Henry II as a lodging for 
an envoy from the king of Algiers. Once more the 
mayor and merchants assembled to greet the visitor 
and conduct him in state to his temporary abode. 
No doubt they obeyed to the letter the command of 
the king to show their guest '' all he wished to see 
in Paris," and, in addition, they provided him with 
a bodyguard of the city's archers who accompanied 
him on all his sightseeing and mounted guard at 
the doors of The Angel. 

Contemporaneously with those hostelries which 
enjoyed the proud honour of sheltering the guests 
of the king, Paris soon began to be amply supplied 



Old Paris 17 

with inns of a more modest character. Ambassa- 
dors were not the only people for whom catering 
was necessary; there were pilgrims, and curious 
travellers, and merchants to be supplied with bed 
and board. To what extent the ordinary inns of 
Paris had multiplied by the middle of the fifteenth 
century is illustrated by an old poetic monologue 
entitled " Le Pelerin Passant." The poem de- 
scribes the woes of the transient, for " The Passing 
Pilgrim " is nothing more than an early catalogue 
of the tribulations which are not obsolete in modern 
times. The hero of the monologue, Pierre by name, 
was acquainted with the anguish caused by a rap- 
idly depleting purse, and not unfamiliar with the 
difficulty of finding suitable accommodation at a 
moderate price. Incidentally, however, the chief in- 
terest of his narrative is that it preserves the names, , 
though not the locations, of many Parisian inns of 
the mid-fifteenth century. 

On his first arrival in the city Pierre put up at 
The Shield of France, a hostelry with which he had 
no fault to find save that the expense of staying 
there soon made serious inroads upon his ready 
money. Eesolved to make a change, he seeks ac- 
commodation at The Shield of Brittany, the hostess 
of which seems to have been ' ' of good family ' ' but 
in reduced circumstances. She had, besides, an en- 
viable reputation as an innkeeper. Unfortunately, 
however, The Shield of Brittany reserved the shel- 



18 Old Paris 

ter of its roof and tlie delicacies of its table for such 
travellers as came from the province whose name 
it bore, and as Pierre was not a Breton he was not 
qualified to partake of its hospitality. Nor was he 
more successful at The Shield of Alen§on, though 
there the problem resolved itself into a question of 
terms rather than a matter of nativity. 

Continuing his search, Pierre next reached The 
Eed Hat, the appearance of which greatly took his 
fancy. He is ready to indite a testimonial on the 
spot : 

" Un grand logis, une grand' court, 
C'estoit un paradis terrestre. " 

Other travellers shared that opinion; such a fine 
house and handsome courtyard promised indeed a 
paradise on earth. But here the difficulty was 
neither birthright nor cash; The Red Hat was so 
famous that its doors were besieged by an eager 
crowd of would-be customers. Pierre, however, 
shared the weakness common to travellers; he 
wanted to get settled in his room as speedily as pos- 
sible, and hence was in no mood to hang around The 
Red Hat for two or three hours with the prospect of 
drawing a blank after all. He had other disappoint- 
ments in store. On knocking at The Shield of Or- 
leans he learns that the innkeeper has exchanged his 
occupation for the greater excitement of military 
service, while the host of The Shield of Bourbon, a 



Old Paris 19 

house rivalling The Red Hat in appearance, has just 
been carried to his grave. At another inn he is able 
to get a meal but no room ; ' ' full up "is the excuse ; 
but, finally, he secures shelter for the night at The 
Shield of Calabria. 

As Pierre does not quote the tariif of The Shield 
of France it would be unjust to burden its host's 
memory with the imputation of extortion ; probably 
the chief reason for the shrinkage of the pilgrim's 
funds was due to participation in the gambling for 
which the inn was notorious. That inn, as a matter 
of fact, was on the black list of the police authori- 
ties ; it was one of the many houses in which travel- 
ling merchants were relieved of their gold either by 
gambling sharks or by the stab of a poniard. 
Either a kindly Providence or the hints of friends 
saved Pierre from trying another inn of that type. 
They were plentiful enough — The Shield of St. 
George, The Tin Plate, The Pestle, The Crayfish, 
The Fat Margaret, etc. — and they were of various 
degrees of iniquity. 

Most of these taverns — for they were taverns 
rather than inns, that is, haunts for drunkards 
rather than hostelries for decent people — were 
naturally more frequented by the natives of Paris 
than by the strangers witliin her gates. The exte- 
rior and interior of one of those haunts as they ap- 
peared in the fifteenth century have been limned 
once for all by Victor Hugo with all the minute real- 



20 Old Paris 

ism of a Flemish genre study. Here is the outward 
seeming of that tower in the Court of Miracles which 
was the cabaret of the Truands: *' This tower was 
the point most alive, and consequently the most hide- 
ous, of the Truandry. It was a sort of monstrous 
hive, which was humming day and night. At night, 
when all the remainder of the rabble were asleep, 
when not a lighted window was to be seen in the 
dingy fronts of the houses in the square, when not 
a sound was heard to issue from its innumerable 
families, from those swarms of thieves, loose women, 
and stolen or bastard children, the joyous tower 
might always be distinguished by the noise which 
proceeded from it, by the crimson light which, 
gleaming at once from the airholes, the windows, the 
crevices in the gaping walls, escaped, as it were, 
from every pore. The cellar, then, formed the pub- 
lic-house. The descent to it was through a low door 
and down a steep staircase. Over the door there 
was, by way of sign, a marvellous daub representing 
new-coined sols and dead chickens, with this punning 
inscription underneath : Aux sonneurs pour les tre- 
passes, that is ' The ringers for the dead.' " And 
then there is this etching of the interior: " The 
apartment, of a circular form, was very spacious; 
but the tables were so close together and the tipplers 
so numerous, that the whole contents of the tavern, 
men, women, benches, beer-jugs, the drinkers, the 
sleepers, the gamblers, the able-bodied, the crippled, 




A SIDE - STREET CABARET: THE WHITE RABBIT. 



Old Paris 21 

seemed thrown pell-mell together with about as 
much order and arrangement as a heap of oyster 
shells. A few greasy candles were burning upon 
the tables; but the grand luminary of the tavern, 
that which sustained in the pot-house the character 
of the chandelier in an opera house, was the fire. 
That cellar was so damp that the fire was never 
allowed to go out even in the height of summer ; an 
immense fireplace, with a carved mantelpiece, and 
thick-set with heavy iron dogs and kitchen utensils, 
had in it, then, one of those large fires composed 
of wood and turf, which, at night, in a village street 
on the continent, cast so red a reflection through the 
windows of some forge upon the wall opposite. A 
large dog, gravely seated in the ashes, was turning 
before the glowing fuel a spit loaded with different 
sorts of meat." 

While, however, such an interior was no doubt 
reduplicated in most of its features in such haunts 
of vice as The Pestle, The Crayfish, The Shield of 
St. George, The Tin Plate, and The Black Head, it 
must not be forgotten that, apart from these dens 
and also removed from the category of inns most 
affected by travellers, there were, from the fifteenth 
century onward, numerous taverns which drew the 
larger number of their clients from the Bohemian 
artists and writers who have for many generations 
constituted one of the most picturesque elements of 
Parisian life. As a considerable number of those 



22 Old Paris 

resorts played a conspicuous part in tlie literary 
history of the city their legends must be reserved 
for subsequent chapters; here, however, mention 
may be made of several which belong to the earliest 
period of Parisian jollity. 

And among such inns pride of place belongs to 
those which are associated with the lawless life of 
Frangois Villon. That man of many aliases, stu- 
dent, poet, and burglar, the " first wicked sanscu- 
lotte, ' ' as Stevenson called him, ' ' the man of genius 
with the moleskin cap, ' ' naturally became ' ' the hero 
of a whole legendary cycle of tavern tricks and 
eheateries." But, thanks to the confessions and 
allusions of his own poems, some of his roistering 
exploits can be assigned to specific houses, and nota- 
bly to The Pestle and The Mule. The former is im- 
mortalized in the poet's '' Large Testament: " 

" Ou pend Venseigne du Pestel 
A hon logis en bon hostel; " i 

the latter in the ' ' Little Testament. ' ' 

Apparently there was little to choose between the 
two houses. Each was a thieves' haunt. From 
each the police made frequent and large hauls of 
criminals. If a distinction was possible, it may 
have consisted in robberies being planned at The 
Mule and enjoyed at The Pestle. We know, at any 
rate, that one considerable enterprise was matured 
at The Mule and was celebrated by that convivial 



Old Paris 23 

supper at which Villon introduced Tabary to the 
other members of his house-breaking crew. Or- 
dered in advance by Tabary, the supper was a sub- 
stantial and well-wined meal, and concluded with 
the swearing-in of Villon's new comrade. Thus for- 
tified with flesh and spirit, the band set out from The 
Mule about midnight to pay their attentions to the 
well-stored College of Navarre. And rich booty 
awarded their assault, sufficient, indeed, to pay for 
many copious draughts and substantial meals at 
The Mule or The Pestle. In this and many another 
midnight raid Villon seems to have been the leader 
of the lawless gang, a startling example in his own 
person, when his verse is kept in mind, of the in- 
scrutable duality of human nature. That he was 
conscious of the contrast his own lines testify: 

" I know the doublet by the grain; 

The monk beneath the hood can spy; 
Master from man can ascertain; 

I know the nun's veiled modesty; 

I know when sportsmen fables ply; 
Know fools who scream and dainties stow; 

Wine from the butt I certify; 
All things except myself I know." 

But Villon bequeathed to the taverns of old Paris 
a heritage more infamous than the thefts recalled 
by The Pestle and The Mule. His most shameless 
ballad, the " Grosse Mar got," is accepted by the 
best critics as a page torn from the poet's life and 



24 Old Paris 

not merely as the exercise of an unbridled imagina- 
tion. And its record of unspeakable debauchery 
had for result that a tavern of ill fame, a house 
better described by the old English word " a stew,'* 
took to itself the significant name of The Fat Mag 
and became the headquarters of the lowest prosti- 
tutes and their brutal paramours. The Fat Mag 
was long since swept away, but its nefarious career 
was protracted until near the close of the seven- 
teenth century. To these inns of dubious reputa- 
tion, the haunts of vice and the resorts of picklocks 
and cutthroats, should be added that known as The 
Green Sign. 

A pleasanter chapter in the history of Parisian 
festivity is that which has been preserved in an 
anonymous book of the early seventeenth century. 
This volume is concerned with the distressful expe- 
riences of a man who had incurred his wife's wrath 
through his drinking habits. Caught in the act of 
emerging from an obscure tavern, he was soundly 
beaten by his unsympathetic spouse, and, while still 
smarting from her blows, had the happy thought of 
appealing to Apollo for full and explicit information 
concerning the " houses of honour " possessed by 
Bacchus in the city of Paris. The choice of divinity 
was a happy one, for Apollo, who at once granted 
the prayer of his suppliant, seems to have had an 
enviable and exhaustive knowledge of the subject. 
If the assaulted husband did not learn where he 



Old Paris 25 

miglit continue his imbibation without danger of 
discovery by his heavy-handed wife, certainly the 
fault could not be charged to the account of Apollo. 
First on the divinity's list of desirable taverns, 
according to the summary given by Edouard Four- 
nier, was the famous Pomme de Pin, or Pineapple, 
which, however, had lost some of its high reputation. 
Notwithstanding that fact it was likely to be 
crowded, and in that event Apollo advised his in- 
quirer to try The Little Devil. Then followed a 
lengthy list of other estimable houses, located in all 
parts of the city. One who found himself in the 
vicinity of the Palais could not do better than break- 
fast at The Great Head ; after hearing mass at the 
church of Saint Eustache the most convenient resort 
was the celebrated house of Cormier; for a climax 
to a theatrical performance at the Hotel de Bour- 
gogne it was impossible to make a wiser choice than 
The Three Mallets. Apollo's suggestions, indeed, 
were inexhaustible; for all times and places and 
occupations he had a suitable inn or tavern on his 
list. Thus, those who played tennis or bowls at the 
Faubourg Saint Grermain were commended to The 
Grolden Eagle; litigants who had business at the 
Chatelet had their choice of The Valorous Roland 
or The Galley or The Chessboard; courtiers on 
their way from the Louvre could find refreshment 
at the '' first tavern in France, the Boesseliere," 
where, however, the charges were so high that hun- 



26 Old Paris 

gry and thirsty persons of moderate means might 
be glad to seek a substitute in The Three Funnels; 
players at mall would find their needs well catered 
for at The Shield or The Bastille ; while an amorous 
male taking a walk with his lady in the garden of 
the Temple could secure a quiet room at The Scarfe. 
Nor did Apollo overlook the case of the man in need 
of a hair of the dog that bit him. Such a sufferer 
from an over-night indulgence would, he imagined, 
seek to cool his brow and calm his thoughts by a 
morning walk in the vicinity of the cemetery Saint- 
Jean, and in that event he could not do better than 
drop in at The Torches, famous for its cordial capa- 
ble of resuscitating a dead man. For still more 
sober moods there was such a dainty inn as The 
Three Spoons. 

Apollo 's list, it will be inferred, kept primarily in 
view the needs of natives ; it must not be imagined, 
however, that no advance had been made in catering 
for the wants of such visitors as the fifteenth-cen- 
tury Pierre whose experiences have already been 
described. On the contrary, hostelries specially 
adapted for the requirements of foreign travellers 
had multiplied beyond number by the seventeenth 
century. And Parisian hosts had already hit upon 
the subtle expedient of adopting for their inns the 
names of famous foreign towns. Hence such 
" springes to catch woodcocks " as the Hotel Hom- 
burg, The Prince of Orange, the Hotel Scotland, the 



Old Paris 27 

Hotel Savoy, the Hotel Venice, etc. Such bait has 
not even yet lost its attractions for the angling 
caterer, but it is interesting to learn that it has been 
a snare for the nibbler from time immemorial. 
Take, for example, the sad but common case of those 
two Dutchmen who visited Paris in the mid-seven- 
teenth century and fell victims to the lure of the 
Hotel Homburg. Their fond anticipations of '' a 
home from home " were rudely disappointed. Of 
course they were '^ treated badly," as were seven 
or eight Germans who had fallen into the same trap. 
But the two Dutchmen had sufficient philosophy to 
deduce the proper moral. Foreigners who lodged 
in Paris with people of their own country * ' profited 
nothing and knew little or nothing of the nation they 
visited. Also, they were deceived and ill-treated by 
their compatriots, who abused the little knowledge 
they had of the land in which they were living." 
And yet those same Dutchmen removed to The 
Prince of Orange! 

Remembering that the king of France so early as 
the thirteenth century claimed the right of super- 
vising the breweries of Paris, and of taxing the 
product of those establishments, it is not surprising 
to learn that inns and taverns were also allowed to 
carry on business only '' by permission of the 
King " — '' Hostellerie, ou Taverne, par la permis- 
sion du Boy," as the inscription ran. And those 
houses, in addition to the announcements dictated 



28 Old Paris 

by the ingenuity of the hosts, such' as '' Weddings 
or banquets supplied here " or " Lodging for horse- 
men or pedestrians," were required to exhibit their 
scale of prices in large characters. 

Also, in due course, such a detail as the signboard 
of inn or tavern was brought within the province 
of the law. An edict of 1567 and another of ten 
years later commanded all innkeepers to expose a 
sign on a conspicuous part of their houses; and in 
1693 an ordinance stipulated that " Tavernkeepers 
must put up signboards and a bush. Nobody shall 
be allowed to open a tavern without having a sign 
and a bush." This stringency led to an unexpected 
development; being compelled to display a sign 
many innkeepers indulged in the biggest they could 
lay their hands on. '' I have seen," wrote a chron- 
icler of the mid- seventeenth century, " hanging from 
the shops, shuttlecocks six feet high, pearls as large 
as a hogshead, and feathers reaching up to the third 
story! " So the law had to be invoked once more, 
this time to bring the compulsory signboards within 
reasonable dimensions. 

Doubtless it will not have escaped the notice of the 
reader that the names selected for the inns and tav- 
erns of old Paris illustrate a change in type, and 
that as an approach is made to more modern times 
the word " hotel " comes into use in preference to 
' ' inn " or ^ ' tavern. ' ' The latter change must have 
added greatly to the confusion of such visitors to 



Old Paris 29 

Paris as were ignorant of the French habit of work- 
ing a single word to death. Than " hotel " there is 
probably no word in any language which can com- 
pare with it as a linguistic scullion. It may mean 
a mansion, a town-hall, a hospital, a mint, a post- 
office, a mart, a theatre, or — perhaps a hotel ! The 
ingenious person who first wrested " hotel " from 
its original meaning, that is, the town house of a 
noble or wealthy family, and brought it into compe- 
tition with " inn " and " tavern," may be held in 
grateful memory by those public caterers who have 
a fancy for high-sounding names, but no one who 
studies the history of old Paris can fail to anathe- 
matize his ghost. 

As for the transformation noticeable in the types 
of names used for inns and taverns, that was a 
natural and inevitable development. As in the 
great cities of other lands, the earliest sign was no 
doubt that of the bush, perhaps an ivy spray, as that 
plant was sacred to Bacchus, or, failing that, a 
branch of a tree, or a bunch of leaves, or even a 
wisp of straw. The ordinance quoted above shows 
that the bush in some form or other had to be dis- 
played by Paris innkeepers long after other signs 
had become common. Those additional signs laid 
toll on the animal kingdom, as in the cases of The 
Eagle or The White Cat; or the accoutrements of 
warfare, as exemplified by The Shield and The 
Sword ; on the emblems of religion, as witness The 



30 Old Paris 

Golden Cross and The Angel ; or on the heraldry of 
provinces, as illustrated by The Shield of Brittany. 
From the latter source, indeed, was derived the long 
line of Red and Blue Lions and other animals of 
abnormal colour. As the family arms were dis- 
played upon the mansions of nobles, and as those 
mansions gave hospitality to travellers, what was 
more natural than that a lion gules should become 
The Eed Lion and a lion azure The Blue Lion ? 

That the signs of the old Paris inns and taverns, 
whether painted, or carved in wood, or worked in 
wrought iron, were often notable as works of art 
is amply demonstrated by the examples preserved 
at the Louvre or the Musee Carnavalet, while several 
remarkable specimens may yet be seen in situ, the 
latter including the sign '^ Au Soleil d'Or " at a 
corner of the Rue Montmartre and the exquisite 
wrought iron grille of the '' Saint Esprit " in the 
Rue Saint Honore. But too many of those pictur- 
esque reminders of the past have utterly perished, 
sharing in that respect the fate of countless famous 
hostelries which have been ruthlessly demolished in 
the interests of the ' ' improvement ' ' of Paris. Hap- 
pily, however, the pages of history and biography 
have given their legends an undying renown. 



CHAPTER II 

INNS AND TAVEKNS OF THE LEFT BANK 

Evidence has already been adduced to show that 
by the middle of the sixteenth century the inns and 
taverns of Paris had multiplied beyond enumera- 
tion. They were to be found in all parts of the an- 
cient town: in the Cite, that island of the Seine 
which was the cradle of the Roman Lutetia; in the 
Ville, or the town proper, which occupied the right 
hand of the river; or in the University, which was 
the name given to the district on the left bank. If, 
however, at that period, a vote had been taken 
among the convivial spirits of Paris with the object 
of ascertaining the most popular house of good 
cheer, the odds are heavy that the top of the pole J^L 
would have been occupied by the Pomme de Pin, 
otherwise The Pineapple. 

Perhaps Victor Hugo made that resort the mental 
model for his description of the ' ' illustrious cabaret 
of the Pomme d'Eve; " in any event his picture 
may aid the imagination in visualizing The Pine- 
apple, for in ancient days the hostelries of Paris 
probably possessed more features in common than 
their modern successors. With a pine-tree, then, 
substituted for the woman in the case, this genre 

31 



32 Old Paris 

study of the Pomme d'Eve may, in the absence of a 
more authentic sketch, suggest the interior of The 
Pineapple: '' The principal room was on the 
ground floor, very large and very low, supported in 
the middle by a heavy wooden pillar, painted yellow. 
There were tables all round; shining pewter pots 
hung up against the wall ; a constant abundance of 
drinkers, and girls in plenty; a large casement look- 
ing to the street; a vine at the door, and over the 
door a creaking iron plate, with an apple and a 
woman painted upon it, rusted by rain, and turning 
with the wind upon an iron pin." Add the count- 
less lighted candles, and the loud peals of laughter, 
and doubtless the resemblance to The Pineapple is 
fairly complete. 

Should it be objected that Victor Hugo was wri- 
ting of the fifteenth century, and that the frequent- 
ers of The Apple of Eve were of a low type, the 
answer is that The Pineapple was in existence in 
the fifteenth century and evidently counted among 
its clients men of dubious reputation. That tavern, 
indeed, was on Villon's calling-list, and its low roof 
often re-echoed his coarse praises of " Blanche the 
cobbler's daughter " and tlie rare physical charms 
of the '' buxom sausage-seller at the corner." 

Remembering the great fame which Villon 
achieved as a poet, it is not improbable that his pat- 
ronage of The Pineapple was the original cause of 
the popularity of that tavern among literary Bohe- 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 33 

mians; what is certain, at any rate, is, that from 
the early sixteenth century onward the house was 
the favourite resort of a long line of famous writers. 
Allusions to its good cheer are of frequent occur- 
rence in French literature, from the history of Pan- 
tagruel to a comedy by Pierre de I'Arrivey. Eon- 
sard celebrated its praises in the spirit of a true 
Bacchanalian; and his disciple, Mathurin Regnier, 
enshrined it in one of his satires : 

" Ou maints ruhis balais, tous rougissants de vin, 
Montr aient un Hacitur a la Pomme de Pin." 

That its fame had not declined in the second half 
of the seventeenth century is obvious from the allu- 
sions of Howell, who, though an Englishman, had 
discovered the tavern and in writing a friend as- 
sured him that he and an acquaintance remembered 
him ' ' lately at La pomme du pin in the best liquor 
of the French grape." Howell's visit to The Pine- 
apple coincided with the period when the tavern was 
the favourite haunt of that vinous poet, Claude 
Chapelle. Not that he restricted his libations to any 
one tavern ; on the contrary, he was most generous 
with his patronage, and is credited with a knowledge 
of drinking-houses comparable with that of Apollo; 
but even such an indiscriminate tippler had his pref- 
erences and when he set out with the determination 
to get drunk his footsteps invariably led him to The 
Pineapple. It was at the door of that tavern he 



34 Old Paris 

was accosted one day by Boileau, who entertained 
a warm friendship for his fellow poet and professed 
to be alarmed at his drinking propensities. '' Your 
inordinate love of the bottle will surely harm you," 
said Boileau. Chapelle appeared to be impressed 
by the warning and ready to listen to further advice. 
^' Come," he answered, '' let us turn in here, and I 
promise to hear with patience all you have to say." 
Boileau accepted the invitation, but the vintage of 
The Pineapple proved so seductive that the temper- 
ance lecture was forgotten and the two friends be- 
came so intoxicated that they had to be sent home 
in a coach. 

Perhaps, however, the most distinguished name 
connected with the history of The Pineapple is that 
of Frangois Eabelais. It is true that the higher 
criticism declares we must abandon the legend which 
represents the creator of Gargantua and Pantagruel 
and Panurge as " a gluttonous and wine-bibbing 
buffoon, as an unfrocked priest, as a sort of ecclesi- 
astical Falstaff. ' ' And further, we are assured that 
the birthplace of Rabelais was not an inn, nor was 
his father an innkeeper. These are distressing cor- 
rections. Eabelais as the son of an innkeeper and 
born in an inn fitted somehow into the atmosphere 
of his book. But even when the higher criticism has 
done its worst, it cannot obliterate the fact that 
Rabelais, while still a monk, was a consenting party 
to the purchase of an inn on behalf of his monastery ; 




FRANCOIS RABELAIS. 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 35 

that he did resume the secular habit ; that his letters 
show him to have been a lover of good wines ; that 
he made a special visit to Paris to attend a sumptu- 
ous dinner; and that, above all, the chronicles of 
Pantagruel perpetuate the fame of The Pineapple. 
If a man may be judged by his writings, there never 
was one of whom it might seem safer to postulate 
that he was, not a buffoon, but a lover of taverns 
and their meat and drink. To the unsophisticated 
reader, indifferent to the philosophical subtleties of 
orthodox Pantagruelism, the pages of Rabelais seem 
to fairly ooze the Bacchanalian spirit. It is ad- 
mitted that the great writer was often in Paris, 
sometimes for a year or more at a stretch, and his 
allusion to The Pineapple as chief among those 
meritorious taverns where the students of Paris re- 
galed themselves with ' ' beautiful shoulders of mut- 
ton seasoned with parsley ' ' can bear no other inter- 
pretation than that he was numbered among its most 
enthusiastic clients. So it was believed through 
many generations, and that faith in the most illus- 
trious of all the many literary associations of The 
Pineapple no doubt contributed not a little to the 
long-continued prosperity of the house. Its golden 
days lasted to the end of the seventeenth century, 
when its enriched host bequeathed it as a reward to 
his accomplished cook. 

How it came to pass that Lord Herbert of Cher- 
bury failed to find The Pineapple must be a mystery 



36 Old Paris 

to all who accept that vainglorious autobiographer 
at his own estimate. He was no stranger to Paris. 
That city was his objective when he set out on his 
travels and wild-oat-sowing in 1608, and he visited 
it several times prior to 1619, when he settled there 
as ambassador of James I. According to his own 
story, Herbert was very much a man about town, a 
hard drinker, a fighter of duels, and an irresistible 
lady-killer. As he was something of a poet, too, he 
would surely have been in his element among the 
versifiers of The Pineapple. Besides, his residence 
was in the Faubourg St. Germain, and thus but a 
short distance from the famous tavern. 

By reading between the lines of his autobiogra- 
phy, however, a solution is obtainable. Whatever 
he might have done before, after he became ambas- 
sador Lord Herbert thought it beneath his dignity 
to be seen in inns. Hence when Prince Charles, af- 
terwards Charles I, tarried a day or two in Paris 
on his way to Madrid in quest of a wife, the ambas- 
sador decided against paying a visit to the British 
heir because he was lodging in an inn in the Rue 
St. Jacques. " If I came alone in the quality of a 
private person," wrote Herbert of the incident, " I 
must go on foot through the streets ; and because I 
was a person generally known, might be followed 
by some one or other, who would discover whither 
my private visit tended, besides that those in the 
inn must needs take notice of my coming in that 



s 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 37 

manner ' ' — with more to the same effect, as though 
the writer were anxious to prove that he did not 
visit the inn solely because he wished to protect 
Prince Charles ' incognito. The chief cause for com- 
plaint with Herbert, however, is that he did not set 
down the name of that inn of the Eue St. Jacques. 
The street is still notable for a large number of an- 
cient houses, and it would have been interesting to 
identify the building associated with the Prince's 
romantic visit in 1623, especially as it was during 
that visit he had his first glimpse of the maiden 
who was to become his wife. A century later the 
street became one of the most Bohemian thorough- 
fares of Paris, frequented, it will be remembered, 
by the hero of two of Anatole France's novels, the 
scholarly Jerome Coignard, who, in his threadbare 
cassock, might have been met spending his last sou 
in The Little Bacchus tavern. 

There is no uncertainty as to the location of an- 
other famous tavern of the seventeenth century. The 
Blackamoor, which was situated in the Eue de la 
Huchette, close to the left bank of the Seine. That 
this house was a formidable rival to The Pineapple 
is obvious from the remark of Theodore Agrippa 
d'Aubigne, the grandfather of Madame de Mainte- 
non, who, in his lively " Adventures du Baron de 
FsBuaste," implies that the two taverns were in keen 
competition with each other. The Blackamoor was 
unceasingly appearing in the drinking songs of the 



38 Old Paris 

reign of Louis XIII, a sufficient proof that it was 
a favourite resort of the Bohemian poets. 

" Susallons chez la Coiffier, 
Ou Men au Petit More. 
Je vous veux tous d£fier 
De M'enivrer encore ! " 

Such an invitation and challenge is a testimony to 
the excellence of the liquor served at The Blacka- 
moor, especially when taken in conjunction with this 
somewhat realistic picture of a drinking bout in that 
tavern : 

" Unjour, Paulmier, a haute voix, 
Enivre dans le Petit More, 
Tandis qu'on le tenoit a trois, 
Desgobillant, disoit encore: 
' Je veux mourir, au cabaret, 
Entre le blanc et le clairet ! ' " 

No laureate of The Blackamoor, however, was 
more profuse in his eulogies than the restless Theo- 
phile. In all the ups and downs of his adventurous 
life, and whether as a Huguenot or freethinker or 
Catholic, from the time when, in his twentieth year, 
he first tasted the freedom of Parisian life, and on- 
ward to the close of his stormy and libertine career, 
he remained a steadfast client of the house. Its 
table as well as its cellar was greatly to his taste. 
" You must know, then," he wrote, " that one eve- 
ning we met at The Blackamoor, which every toper 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 39 

honours because of its good wine. We had a hash 
well seasoned with wine, followed by partridges and 
young rabbits." Here and there in his poems, too, 
he gives pen-pictures of his fellow frequenters of 
the tavern. One of those vignettes preserves the 
garb of a drunkard who frequently shared the poet's 
potations. " As to the hat he wears, it is such that 
one might describe it as a funnel. The cord which 
surrounds it is made a la marane, ornamented like 
the back of a donkey; his ear is like that of a pig." 
It must not be imagined, however, that the custom- 
ers of The Blackamoor were drawn from the lowest 
ranks of the community; in the early seventeenth 
century it was frequented by the greatest lords of 
the day. The tariif , indeed, must have kept the place 
select, for, in 1607, the average cost of meat and 
drink was six crowns for each person, a sum prob- 
ably equal to twenty-four dollars ! 

Although the Rue de la Huchette, in common with 
many other streets in that district of the Latin 
Quarter, retains its old-time aspect to a surprising 
extent, the identity of The Blackamoor has long 
been lost. Such is not the case, however, with The 
White Horse, an ancient inn on the Eue Mazet. To 
that venerable hostelry there is no better informed 
guide than Georges Cain, the accomplished curator 
of the Musee Carnavalet, whose enviable knowledge 
of Parisian topography has been displayed in many 
fascinating volumes. " Here," he writes of The 



40 Old Paris 

White Horse, '* in 1652, under Louis XIV, was tlie 
bureau of the Orleans and Blois coaches. Every 
morning, at six o'clock in summer, and ten in win- 
ter, the public conveyances which reached Orleans 
in two days (by way of Linas, Arpajon, Etampes 
and Toury), started from this vast courtyard, 
crowded with travellers, porters, friends and ac- 
quaintances, servant-women, parcels, packages and 
trunks. Amidst cracking of whips, blowing of horns, 
shouts and farewells and waving handkerchiefs the 
ponderous vehicle would get under way in a huge 
cloud of dust. Postilions swearing, dogs barking, 
women crying — here were concentrated the excite- 
ment of departure, the joy of returning, the pathos 
of farewell — a very microcosm of human life ! 

"■ Now this life is fallen dead, but the surround- 
ings are still the same, and are striking enough. 
The ancient inn falling to ruin, the old-fashioned 
courtyard where the grass grows between the stones, 
are just as they were in the days when d'Artagnan, 
as Dumas tells us in his happy way, alighted here 
(or would have alighted, if he had really lived), ar- 
riving from Meung on his yellow horse ! It is now 
what it always was; stables and coach-houses are 
there still. A score or so of horses munch their hay, 
tied to thei posts of pent-houses that date from the 
G-rand Monarque, or under the smoke-begrimed 
beams sheltering the mangers of an olden time. 
Market carts are ranged in convenient corners, 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 41 

fowls peck at the rich manure heaps, lean cats bask 
in the sun beside the great iron-bound stone posts, 
chipped and battered by the thousands of knocks 
and shocks they have endured in the course of three 
hundred years ! 

" From this courtyard, once so full of life and 
stir, travellers departed for long and distant jour- 
neys; the only destination you can book for nowa- 
days is the Land of Dreams. Yes, it is one of the 
charms of Paris for lovers of the Past to find here 
and there such old corners as this, left almost intact 
amid modern improvements — spots where they can 
call up the visions of those olden times they love so 
well I" 

Strolling one day into this ancient courtyard of 
The White Horse in the company of Jules Massenet, 
the eminent composer, M. Cain overheard his friend 
murmur, " It must have been here that Manon 
alighted from the diligence." The reflection was 
natural in a man who thinks in operatic pictures, 
and the setting of M. Massenet's " Manon " is prob- 
ably indebted to this original. If the frail heroine 
of the Abbe Prevost's romance never illumined the 
courtyard with her beauty, countless other country 
maidens as fair and frail as she have, without doubt, 
passed into the maelstrom of Parisian life through 
its battered archway. 

Fiction and probability, however, give place to 
fact in the case of The Green Basket, an inn which, 



42 Old Paris 

although situated in the Cite not far from Notre 
Dame, belongs more to the history of the left than 
the right bank of the Seine. Its title to fame is that 
it was the scene of several exciting incidents in the 
early manhood years of Voltaire. Although he was 
doubtless familiar with more convivial resorts, for 
he was still little more than a youth when he became 
a member of the dissipated coterie of the Temple, 
it was at The Green Basket he slept and spent his 
working hours. Here, then, he made his headquar- 
ters when he returned from his exile to Sully, — a 
crisis in his career which was to have important re- 
sults. 

Louis XIV had been dead some eighteen months 
and the Duke of Orleans held the reins of govern- 
ment as regent. Shortly before Voltaire's return 
to Paris there had been published two biting satires 
on the state of the nation, entitled ^' Les j'ai vu " 
and " Puero Regnante," the authorship of which 
was attributed to the young poet. As, however, 
there were no facts upon which action could be 
taken, a spy of the government. Captain Beauregard 
by name, was detailed to interview Voltaire and 
learn what he could. On his first visit to The Green 
Basket the spy found his victim lounging on a sofa. 

'' Anything new? " he asked. 

" A number of things," Beauregard answered, 
'' have appeared against the Duke of Orleans and 
the Duchess of Berri." 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 43 

^' Are any of them considered good? " 

Beanregard was diplomatic. '' There is thought 
to be much wit in them, ' ' he said, ' ' and they are all 
laid to you. For my part, I do not believe it ; it is 
impossible to write such things at your age." 

Voltaire, according to the spy's report, fell into 
the trap. " You are mistaken," he remarked, " in 
supposing that I am not the author of the works 
that have appeared during my absence. I sent all 
my things to M. le Blanc; and, to put the Duke of 
Orleans off the scent, I went into the country during 
the carnival, and stayed two months with M. de 
Caumartin, who saw those writings first ; and after- 
wards I sent them to Paris. Since I cannot get my 
revenge upon the Duke of Orleans in a certain way, 
I will not spare him in my satires." 

" Why," asked Beauregard, as if with the inter- 
est of a friend, '' what has the Duke of Orleans done 
to you! " 

" What! " exclaimed Voltaire, leaping to his feet, 

^' You don't know what that did to mel He 

exiled me because I let the public know that that 
Messallina of a daughter of his was — no better 
than she should be." 

Mter that outburst Beauregard left The Green 
Basket, well satisfied with the knowledge he had 
gained. On calling again the following day the spy 
took from his pocket in a casual way a copy of the 
" Puero Eegnante," whereupon, so his story ran, 



44 Old Paris 

Voltaire said, ' ' As to that, I wrote it at M. de Can- 
martin 's, but a good while before I left." Two more 
days elapsed, and then Beauregard dropped in once 
more to expostulate with the young po«t. 

'' How is this, my dear friend? You boast of 
having written the ' Puero B-egnante,' and yet I 
have just heard, from very good authority, that it 
was written by a Jesuit professor." 

"It is of no consequence to me," Voltaire re- 
joined impatiently, '' whether you believe me or not. 
Those Jesuits are like the jays in the fable; they 
borrow the peacock's feathers with which to deco- 
rate themselves.'-' 

And so closed the third act of the little comedy 
which was enacted in The Green Basket in the 
spring of 1717. The fourth act and climax was not 
long delayed. Late the following morning, Voltaire, 
who had protracted his slumbers to an unconscion- 
able hour, was aroused by the heavy footfalls of 
half a dozen men climbing the staircase leading to 
his room. And when he had recovered full con- 
sciousness and opened his eyes, it was to find these 
unexpected visitors surrounding his bed. One of 
the band, touching the poet on the shoulder with a 
white wand, handed him one of those pressing invi- 
tations to the hospitality of the Bastille which, 
under the name of Lettres de Cachet, played so 
large a part in the control of the turbulent spirits 
of the eighteenth century. As he could not be con- 




VOLTAIRE. 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 45 

veyed through the streets of Paris in his night-shirt, 
Voltaire was allowed to go to his dressing-room to 
prepare for his journey, and during his absence his 
papers were sealed and an inventory made of his 
belongings. Ere the proceedings terminated, the 
inquiring Beauregard came upon the scene in a 
casual way, still thirsting for information. 

" Why are you arrested! " he asked Voltaire. 

And when the poet rejoined that he knew nothing 
about it, Beauregard hazarded the guess that his 
writings were the cause. 

" There are no proofs," Voltaire said, '' that I 
have written anything, for I have never confided my 
writings to any but true friends." 

Ignoring the implication, the spy asked whether 
there was nothing in the papers before them to con- 
vict him. 

'' No," replied Voltaire, " for luckily the officer 
did not get hold of the pair of breeches in which 
there were some verses and songs. I took an oppor- 
tunity, while I was dressing, to throw them where 
it won't be easy to find them." 

A few minutes later the poet was on his way to 
the Bastille, and The Green Basket knew him no 
more. The inn had lost an excellent customer, but 
gained an association for the sake of which the host, 
had he been a man of discretion, might have been 
willing to bid farewell to half a dozen guests. 

Some twenty years after The Green Basket had 



46 Old Paris 

acquired its one memorable link with the eighteenth- 
century literary history of Paris, a less pretentious 
hostelry in the Rue des Cordier, a short street con- 
necting the Rue Victor Cousin with the Rue St. 
Jacques, was beginning to make reminiscent history 
on a more ample scale. This establishment, despite 
the fact that its accommodation was far from being 
of the highest class, arrogated the title of the Hotel 
St. Quentin, an early example of the travesty of ap- 
plying the designation of a noble's town mansion to 
an inferior lodging. No doubt its popularity with 
studious persons was accounted for partly by its 
adjacency to the Sorbonne, and, judging from the 
financial resources of its most notable guests, it may 
be taken as proved that the prices in force were not 
excessive. Perhaps the latter fact was the chief 
reason why the Hotel St. Quentin, " a wretched 
hotel " in " a wretched street," enjoyed so large a 
clientele among the students and other learned per- 
sons of the Latin Quarter. 

One of the earliest patrons of the house was Jean 
Baptiste Gresset, that singular poet who came to 
Paris in his sixteenth year. It was as a student he 
first lodged at the Hotel St. Quentin, and it was 
to that house he returned in 1740, when he had al- 
ready written that exquisite poem, '' Vert Vert," by 
which he is best remembered. Sad, indeed, was the 
mood in which Gresset revisited the scenes of his 
student days. In revenge for the gentle satire of 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 47 

his poem, he had been expelled from the religious 
order of which he had been a member from his 
youth, and lacked the strength of mind to accept 
that degradation as a flattering tribute to his art. 
The holy fathers who engineered the expulsion may 
certainly be congratulated on the discernment which 
detected ridicule of their order under the smiling 
verses of " Vert Vert." The parrot hero of the 
bewitching tale was doubtless a formidable foe of 
monasticism. Reared in a convent, the bird's talk 
was compact of prayers and piety, but on being sent 
on a visit to another house of religion he made the 
acquaintance of profane swearers, and was so en- 
amoured of the new language that on arriving at his 
destination he horrified his hostesses by remarks 
wholly unsuitable for religious ears. On being re- 
turned in disgrace, the sinner is punished in ortho- 
dox monastic fashion, and finally attains repentance 
and a saintly death. Such was the poem for which 
Gresset had been excommunicated and been obliged 
to once more seek his garret in the Hotel St. Quen- 
tin. 

Somewhere about the same period that roof also 
gave shelter to two remarkable brothers, the Abbes 
de Mably and de Condillac. The presence of the 
latter in so rude an hostelry may be accounted for 
by the fact that he was a philosopher ; that of the 
former by his avowed antagonism to riches and lux- 
ury. Mably 's simple tastes were no doubt greatly 



48 Old Paris 

admired by the publishers of his day, for a few 
copies of his books was all the royalty he would ac- 
cept for works which greatly enriched the booksell- 
ers ; his small income was, he said, sufficient for his 
wants. The low living of the Hotel St. Quentin was 
not detrimental to high thinking, for he is credited 
with having foretold the French Revolution, and 
penned one book which kept for him the regard of 
American republicans until he wrote another on 
their constitution which they rewarded by burning 
its author in effigy as an enemy to toleration and 
liberty. 

These three, however, — Grresset the poet, Condil- 
lac the philosopher, and Mably the political econo- 
mist, — did not exhaust the Hotel St. Quentin 's title 
to fame. It had another client of far greater re- 
nown. 

For, in the early summer of 1741, there arrived 
in Paris a young man bearing the name of Jean 
Jacques Rousseau, and destiny led his steps to the 
Hotel St. Quentin. It may have been that he had 
learned the name of the hotel during his year's tu- 
toring at Lyons, where he had been entrusted with 
the education of the children of Mably 's elder 
brother; in any case, it was here, in '' a wretched 
room " of that " wretched hotel " in a '' wretched 
street," that the famous sentimentalist made his 
second experiment of life in Paris. Here, too, he 
remained for nearly two years, reconciled to his 




JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU. 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 49 

abode because of its associations with the three no- 
tables named above. 

Besides it was cheap, and not far from the Lux- 
embourg Gardens. These were important matters 
with Rousseau. His purse was somewhat flaccid, 
and his hopes of realizing fortune, if not fame, by 
his new method of musical notation were speedily 
dashed by the adverse report of the Academy. In 
these idle days the pleasant walks in the Luxem- 
bourg Gardens were an ideal retreat for a man who 
remembered the rural delights of Les Charmettes, 
and there, accordingly, Rousseau spent his mornings 
wandering to and fro while committing poetry to 
memory. His alternative afternoons were given up 
to the theatre and a cafe in which he played chess 
or watched some notable exponents of the game. 
Other leisure hours were spent in quest of patrons 
or patronesses, his pursuit of one of the latter ta- 
king that amorous turn which was characteristic of 
the man. But ever in the background of this aimless 
life lay that '' wretched room " of the Hotel St. 
Quentin. 

Rousseau's faithfulness to that unattractive hos- 
telry was to have issue in an event which coloured 
all his after-life. For, when he returned to Paris 
toward the end of 1744, from an absence in Venice 
of some eighteen months, he once more took up his 
quarters at the Hotel St. Quentin. During the in- 
terval a new landlady had taken charge of the house. 



50 Old Paris 

a native of Orleans and a woman who " pitched the 
conversation in merry Eabelaisian key." Nor was 
that the only change. But Rousseau shall tell the 
story in his own words : ^ ' To help her with the linen, 
she had a young girl from her native place, about 
twenty-two or twenty-three years of age. This girl, 
whose name was Theresa Le Vasseur, was of a re- 
spectable family, her father being an official at the 
Orleans mint, and her mother engaged in business. 
. . . The first time I saw this girl appear at table, 
I was struck by her modest behaviour, and, still 
more, by her lively and gentle looks, which, in my 
eyes, at that time appeared incomparable. . . . Our 
hostess herself had led an irregular life. I was the 
only person who spoke and behaved decently. They 
teased the girl, I took her part, and immediately 
their railleries were turned against me. ' ' 

While it was probably true that the other diners 
around the table of the Hotel St. Quentin were 
" people to whom graces of mien and refinement of 
speech had come neither by nature nor cultivation, ' ' 
it is equally likely they had considerable excuse for 
their raillery. For, according to the best evidence, 
Theresa was not the modest and lively maiden of 
Rousseau's fancy. She had no beauty save that 
created by her sentimental knight's imagination, 
and the calibre of her brain may be judged from the 
fact that she could never be taught to read, could 
not remember the order of the months, and proved a 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 51 

hopeless pupil in such a simple matter as master- 
ing the hours of the clock. In short, as John Mor- 
ley remarks, " Theresa Le Vasseur would probably 
have been happier if she had married a stout stable- 
boy, as indeed she did some thirty years hence by 
way of gathering up the fragments that were left." 
For those thirty years, however, she was the com- 
panion of Kousseau, and he affirmed that that com- 
panionship was the one consolation of his life. He, 
then, had good cause to remember the Hotel St. 
Quentin. 

About eighteen years after Rousseau had suc- 
cumbed to the " modest " charms of Theresa, an- 
other sentimentalist, but of English birth, arrived 
in Paris to add to the literary associations of its 
inns. This was Laurence Sterne, whose " Senti- 
mental Journey " preserves, it will be recalled, 
many lively pictures of life in the French capital. 

Few of Sterne's biographers have concerned 
themselves much with identifying the house in which 
he stayed when he arrived in Paris at the beginning 
of 1762. And that reverend humourist, while careful 
to note the street where he had his encounter with 
Madame E.'s fille de chambre, and to indicate many 
another locality of his piquant adventures, merely 
gives the name of his hostelry as the Hotel de Mo- 
dene. That was not a fictitious name. It appears, 
indeed, in a brief list of the '^ most agreeable and 
most frequented " hotels of the Faubourg St. Ger- 



52 Old Paris 

main made by a visitor in 1715, and the list affords 
the information that it was situated in the Bue 
Jacob. That fits in exactly with the topographical 
directions of Madame R.'s attractive maid. And it 
adds another Shandean interest to the Rue Jacob, 
for it was in that street also Sterne was for a time 
the guest of Madame Rambouillet. 

That Sterne had promised himself a gay time in 
Paris is a safe inference from the nature of the man. 
But the first hours of realization were not promis- 
ing. " I own my first sensations," he confessed, 
" as soon as I was left solitary and alone in my 
own chamber in the hotel, were far from being so 
flattering as I had prefigured .them. I walked up 
gravely to the window in my dusty black coat, and 
looking through the glass saw all the world in yel- 
low, blue, and green, running at the ring of pleasure. 
Alas, poor Yorick! cried I, what art thou doing 
here? On the very first onset of all this glittering 
clatter thou art reduced to an atom — seek — seek 
some winding alley, with a tourniquet at the end of 
it, where chariot never rolled or flambeau shot its 
rays — there thou mayest solace thy soul in converse 
sweet with some kind grisset of a barber's wife, and 
get into such coteries ! — " 

But here the reverend adventurer pulled himself 
up short. He would go and present a letter of in- 
troduction. So his valet was despatched in search 
of a barber and bidden return with all speed to brush 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 53 

his master's clothes. The barber, however, was so 
long a-eoming and so slow in his operations that by 
the time Sterne was ready to sally forth the hour 
for formal calls had gone. After all, then, he was 
driven back on his original programme, and, for a 
stranger, his Inck was phenomenal. To bring down 
in one expedition two such birds as the lively glove- 
maker, with her willingness to have her pulse felt, 
and Madame R.'s dainty little maid, with her con- 
fiding ways, was fortune indeed. Certainly Sterne 
had no reason to complain of Parisian hospi- 
tality. 

When, however, he reached the Hotel de Modene 
once more his valet La Fleur had alarming news to 
communicate. The lieutenant of police had called 
to make inquiries about the new English arrival. 
And hardly had he announced that momentous fact 
than the master of the hotel appeared upon the scene 
to express his hope that his guest had provided him- 
self with a passport. Sterne had not. To make 
matters worse, in the eyes of his host, he did not 
even know any one in Paris who could procure him 
such a document. The hotel-keeper was really 
alarmed, more probably at the prospect of losing his 
guest's money than for any harm that might betide 
his person; but Sterne was in too jaunty a mood to 
be distressed ; to the assurance that he would be in 
the Bastille on the morrow, he rejoined, '' But I've 
taken your lodgings for a month, and I'll not quit 



54 Old Paris 

tliem a day before the time for all the kings of 
France in the world." 

That was not the only animated interview Sterne 
had with the host of the Hotel de Modene. Although 
no purist in morals, mine host was a stickler for the 
perquisites of his profession. Hence his horror on 
learning that Sterne had had a two hours ' interview 
in his room with Madame R.'s alluring little maid, 
and his speedy recovery on learning that the visitor 
was neither a lace seller nor had Sterne purchased 
any of her wares. That made all the difference. 
Otherwise '' the credit of the hotel," etc., etc. He 
would not have minded ' ' twenty girls ' ' in the morn- 
ing, provided, of course, they carried band-boxes 
filled, or not, with lace. Twenty, Sterne replied, 
with a deprecation of which he might not have been 
suspected, were a score more than he reckoned upon. 
And so hostilities were abandoned, and he stayed 
his month at least at the Hotel de Modene. 

But Mrs. Sterne, absent in England, knew noth- 
ing of these lively proceedings. They were stored 
up for the pages of the '^ Sentimental Journey." 
In his letters home the amorous sentimentalist con- 
fined himself to such safe topics as the gossip of his 
barber, the pulpit oratory of a famous preacher, his 
party engagements, and — unfailing theme of the 
Briton — the weather. As an afterthought he re- 
ported his progress in French ; " I speak it fast and 
fluent, but incorrect in accent and phrase." Yet it 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 55 

is evident neither his faulty quantities nor blunder- 
ing idioms interfered seriously with his temporary 
bachelorhood at the hotel on the Rue Jacob. 

Sterne was still in France, though not in Paris, 
when another of his compatriots took up his abode 
in a hotel of the Faubourg St. Germain. As became 
a writer who was scrupulously careful to verify his 
references, Edward Gibbon — for that was the new 
arrival — enlightened his correspondents as to the 
exact details of his address. In informing his 
father that he had received one of his letters twelve 
days after its date owing to somebody's negligence, 
he added: " My direction is, a Monsieur Gibbon, 
Gentilhomme Anglois, a VHotel de Londres, rue de 
Columbier, Faubourg St. Germain, a Paris." The 
Hotel London does not appear on the list which de- 
fines the locality of Sterne's hostelry, but it men- 
tions another, the " large Hotel de Lurgnes," as 
being situated in the same street. 

Unlike that " Passing Pilgrim " of the previous 
chapter, who changed his quarters so frequently. 
Gibbon's first choice appears to have been so for- 
tunate that he had no desire to move. In the latter 
half of the eighteenth century the Faubourg St. 
Germain was still the chief residential centre of the 
French nobility, and it may be assumed that the 
Hotel London was in harmony with the select 
amenity of the neighbourhood. " You see," Gib- 
bon wrote his father, ' ' I am still in that part of the 



56 Old Paris 

town; and indeed from all the intelligence I could 
collect, I saw no reason to change, either on account 
of cheapness or pleasantness." Not that the tariff 
of the Hotel London was on the moderate scale of 
Eousseau's " wretched " abode; Gibbon's " cheap- 
ness " must be interpreted in a comparative sense, 
for he no sooner wrote the word than he added that 
Paris was ' ' unavoidably a very dear place ; ' ' what 
he wished to impress upon his father, who was pay- 
ing his expenses, evidently was that for his son the 
Hotel London was as reasonable a place as he could 
find. 

When Gibbon took up his abode at the Hotel Lon- 
don in January, 1763, there to remain for fourteen 
weeks, he was in his twenty-sixth year and already 
an author. Not, of course, of the " Decline and 
Fall ; ' ' that was a project which was to be attempted 
later; but of the " Essay or the Study of Litera- 
ture," which, written in French, had been " little 
read and speedily forgotten " in England, but had 
been received with marked favour in Paris. In ad- 
dition to that auspicious circumstance, Gibbon bore 
with him to the French capital many letters of in- 
troduction, of which not a few were written by the 
graceful pen of Horace Walpole. These circum- 
stances, apart from the difference in the natures of 
the men, will explain why Gibbon was neither re- 
duced to the grisette-hunting expedients of Sterne 
nor guilty of suspicious interviews in his bed-room 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 57 

a.t the Hotel London. When he set out from that 
hostelry in the morning, conscious that his English 
clothes looked " very foreign," it was to roam here 
and there through Paris in search of churches and 
palaces, libraries and picture galleries; while his 
afternoon and evening calls had for their objective 
the enjoyment of the society of a " polished and 
amiable people." At the end of a month his expe- 
riences had answered his most sanguine expecta- 
tions. " The buildings of every kind, the libraries, 
the public diversions, take up a great part of my 
time; and I have already found several houses, 
where it is both very easy and very agreeable to be 
acquainted. ' ' 

In addition to his topographical expeditions and 
social engagements, Gribbon found time to prosecute 
his studies in his apartments at the Hotel London, 
for he pays a grateful tribute to the librarians who 
allowed him the use of their books in his own rooms. 
In one letter he describes how those rooms were 
*' hung with damask," and gives a gorgeous glimpse 
of the state in which he made his journeys abroad 
in a coach behind which were ' ' two footmen in hand- 
some liveries." Strangely enough, these details 
have been overlooked by most of the historian's biog- 
raphers, who speak of him as the guest of the Neck- 
ers, ignoring his explicit statement that he did not 
" lodge in their house." Hence it is not the man- 
sion on the Kue de la Chaussee d'Antin but the 



58 Old Paris 

Hotel London which must be held in remembrance 
as Gibbon's Parisian home. 

Nothing untoward happened to disturb the peace 
of the historian's sojourn. He was thirty years too 
soon. He did, it is true, meet some of the men, such 
as Diderot, who were the heralds of convulsion ; but 
some three decades were to elapse ere their revolu- 
tionary teaching reached its climax in the Reign of 
Terror. Something of the sinister shadow of that 
time clouded the visit to Paris of one of Gibbon's 
fellow countrymen. Dr. John Moore, who arrived 
in the city early in the fateful month of August, 
1792, and put up at the Hotel de Muscovie in the 
Faubourg St. Germain. This was one of the most 
fashionable hostelries of the day, much affected not 
only by wealthy Russians but also by English no- 
bles. And, thanks to the diary of Dr. Moore, it is 
possible to gain some idea of how the stirring days 
of the French Revolution affected the guests of such 
establishments. 

During the first few days of that memorable 
August the patrons of the Hotel Russia were little 
disturbed by the momentous doings which were hap- 
pening in Paris. But on the ninth day there came 
a change. The climax was drawing near. In the 
National Assembly discussion waxed ever more 
bitter; in the various districts of the city the dis- 
contented were on the eve of open rebellion. When 
Dr. Moore returned to his hotel late that night he 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 59 

found all the guests seething with excitement. 
About midnight, too, the usual quiet of the hotel 
was broken by the beating of drums and repeated 
cheering in the adjacent streets. The landlord ex- 
plained that orders had been given to all citizens to 
illuminate their windows; that an attack on the 
king's palace was anticipated; and that the Na- 
tional Guards were standing to arms at all danger- 
ous posts. Dr. Moore, however, went to bed as 
usual, only to be awakened about two o'clock by the 
clanging of bells, and to learn, from other guests 
who had been sitting up all night, that the masses 
were assembling for the purpose of marching to the 
Tuileries. Once again Dr. Moore sought his couch, 
to be thoroughly aroused several hours later by the 
unmistakable booming of cannon and impassioned 
shouts of, '* To arms, citizens, to arms! " 

What followed on that sanguinary day is written 
in the annals of the French Eevolution. But how the 
steadfast faithfulness of the Swiss Guards, and the 
hatred which their loyalty aroused, affected the hos- 
telry life of Paris is illustrated by what happened 
late that day at the Hotel Russia. As was the usual 
custom in those days, a board fixed on the gate of 
the hotel bore the inscription, '' Parlez au Suisse " 
and the porter at the gate was spoken of as '' the 
Swiss " no matter what his nationality might be; 
but ere the Tenth of August passed into history the 
board at the Hotel Russia was repainted, " Parlez 



60 Old Paris 

an Portier, ' ' and the man in charge of the gate im- 
plored Dr. Moore and all other returning guests to 
speak of him in future as ' ' the Porter ' ' and not as 
" the Swiss." Those were anxious times for the 
landlord, too, as he had to take his share of guard 
duty and assist in the search for suspected per- 
sons. 

In fact, for some years to come, the events of the 
French Eevolution coloured the life of many of the 
inns and taverns of Paris. One illustration is af- 
forded by The Golden Cup, an inn at the corner of 
the Rue de Varenne, of which Georges Cain writes : 
'' In the Rue de Varenne alone, each portal awakes 
a remembrance of the most illustrious names of 
France's nobility: Broglie, Bourbon, Conde, Ville- 
roy, Castries, Rohan-Chabot, Tesse, Bethune-Sully, 
Rouge, Montmorency, Segna, Aubeterre, Narbonne- 
Pelet, etc., and some of the hosts of these aristocratic 
dwellings were certainly found disguised, dressed 
up as horse-dealers, drovers, peasants, workmen, in 
The Golden Cup hostelry, which was celebrated in 
the history of the Chouannerie. The heroes of 
' Tournebat,' my dear friend Lenotre's interesting 
work, put up there, says the author, who, himself 
filled with enthusiasm, knows how to inspire his 
reader with the same. It was one of the meeting- 
places used by the sworn companions of Georges 
Cadoudal, who hid there several times; and there, 
too, the royalist conspirators met to complete, for 



Inns and Taverns of the Left Bank 61 

Vendemiaire, Anno IV, their arrangements relative 
to the abduction of the Convention." 

Less directly, perhaps, but none the less surely 
was the Revolution responsible for the historic as- 
sociation of The King Clovis, a tavern on the Rue 
Clovis, which was the meeting-place of the conspir- 
acy of the Four Sergeants of Rochelle. It was 
while the leader of that band, Frangois Bories, was 
stationed in Paris that he was initiated into the 
ranks of the Charbonniers, and agreed to secure re- 
cruits in his own regiment. He proved a faithful 
and zealous member of the fraternity which aimed 
to overthrow the Bourbon monarchy, and in the end 
he, and his three comrades, paid the usual penalty. 
Although the scene of their chief activity was at 
La Rochelle, it was in The King Clovis in Paris that 
Bories received those halves of cards by which he 
was to identify other members of the society. 

And it was another spreading wave of the same 
revolutionary influence which for a day brought into 
prominence a tavern overlooking the Place St. 
Jacques. Of all the many attempts on the life of 
Louis Philippe, whose pose as " Citizen King " was 
no protection against the designs of discontented in- 
dividuals, that of Fieschi, with its elaborate infernal 
machine, was the most horrible. The king escaped, 
but eighteen spectators were killed. Largely for 
that reason, the public execution of the murderer on 
the Place St. Jacques attracted an enormous con- 



62 Old Paris 

course of onlookers, conspicuous among whom was 
the deposed Duke of Brunswick, who watched the 
grim scene from a window of the tavern aforesaid. 
Attired in '' a fashionable great-coat of olive green, 
and frequently waving about a beautiful Indian silk 
handkerchief," he was also observed to have pro- 
vided himself with '' a spying-glass " the better to 
follow the events on the scaffold below. Perhaps 
the Duke was anxious to learn the etiquette of such 
an occasion in the event of his being called upon to 
be the chief figure in such a ceremony. For his ap- 
pearance at the tavern window overlooking the Place 
St. Jacques coincided with a homicidal episode in 
his own inglorious career. Enamoured of an ac- 
tress, and having discovered that a convenient spot 
in which to indulge his passion was behind the scenes 
while his charmer was attired in a minimum of 
clothing, he was enjoying a tender embrace when a 
stage-hand, who had been bribed to carry out the 
joke, rang up the curtain and disclosed the couple 
to the audience. The actress fainted, but the duke 
whipped out his sword and laid the joker dead upon 
the stage. And yet, by some means or other, he was 
able to avoid becoming a spectacle for some other 
occupant of that tavern window on the Place St. 
Jacques. 




THE TURRET HOTEL. 



CHAPTER III 

INNS AND TAVEKNS OP THE EIGHT BANK 

Student life was the most important factor in 
giving colour to the history of the inns and taverns 
on the left bank of the Seine. With a few natural 
exceptions, those hostelries live in the annals of old 
Paris because they were the haunts of Bohemians, a 
feature which was to be still more conspicuous when 
cafes came into fashion. The inns and taverns on 
the right bank of the river, however, gathered asso- 
ciations of another kind. Some, it is true, shine by 
the reflected glory of literary genius, but in the 
mass their claim to remembrance is based upon their 
connection with assassination and political strife. 

Even that tavern of many memories which, as a 
tablet records, once stood at the corner of the Rue 
de I'Arbre-Sec on the Rue de Rivoli, first emerged 
into history as a scene of bloodshed. For it was 
in that mansion, then known as the Hotel de Pon- 
thieu, that the first victim of the massacre of St. 
Bartholomew lost his life. On the dawn of that 
memorable August day of 1572, in an upper room, 
Admiral Coligny lay in a fitful slumber. The leader 
of the Huguenots had ignored the warning of a cap- 
tain who said he was leaving Paris because " they 

63 



64 Old Paris 

show us too many kindnesses here ; I had rather es- 
cape with the fools, than perish with such as are 
over-wise." Coligny had, indeed, given no heed to 
the attempt already made on his life — an attempt 
which had resulted in the fevered wounds that had 
disturbed his sleep. And now the end had come. 
There was no mistaking the meaning of the noise of 
battered doors and the heavy tread of armed men. 
In a few minutes the ruthless emissaries of the mur- 
derous Duke of Guise and the fiendish Catherine de 
Medici burst into the room of the aged and wounded 
Coligny and despatched him with many sword 
thrusts. The bleeding body was at once thrown 
down into the courtyard, there to be beheaded and 
then dragged forth into the streets as a sign that 
the " holy work " was well begun. 

Many years later, in 1744, the room which had 
witnessed that cold-blooded murder was the scene 
of the birth of the famous comedienne, Sophie Ar- 
nauld. By that date the mansion had fallen upon 
evil days, for it had become a tavern of somewhat 
dubious repute, of which Sophie's father was the 
keeper. When that tavern-born child became the 
' ' Queen of the Opera ' ' and won the favour not only 
of all Paris but also the enthusiastic admiration of 
such critics as David Garrick, her birthplace became 
a shrine for admiring pilgrims. Many, doubtless, 
also recalled its associations with Coligny; with 
Ranee, whose mistress, the Duchess of Montbazon. 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 65 

once resided under its roof; and with the artist, 
C. Van Loo, who used one of its rooms as a studio. 

Through the assassin's knife, too, another build- 
ing became suddenly notorious in the first decade 
of the seventeenth century. This time, however, it 
was not a noble's mansion which had nefarious fame 
thrust upon it, but a lowly inn known as The Three 
Pigeons. For so had destiny ordered it that it was 
in that hostelry Francois Eavaillac found a home 
while he awaited the opportunity to join the ranks 
of the regicides. 

Chequered indeed, but mostly by ill fortune, had 
been his thirty-two years. Born in lowly circum- 
stances at Angouleme, he tried many ways of earn- 
ing a living, now as a gentleman's servant, anon as 
a lawyer, and finally as a school-teacher. He failed 
in all, and when debt drove him to despair he sought 
admission into a religious order, for there was a 
strong strain of fanaticism in his ill-balanced nature. 
Such was Eavaillac when he arrived in the capital 
in the spring of 1610. 

Paris was in a festal mood. As Henry IV was 
on the eve of starting for a warlike expedition, he 
had consented to the crowning of his Queen, the bet- 
ter to establish her authority as regent during his 
absence. The celebration of that ceremony had 
naturally attracted great crowds of visitors and the 
inns and hotels were full to overflowing. And gos- 
sip, largely misinformed, was busy with the king's 



66 Old Paris 

approaching departure and its purpose; even sol- 
diers were overheard declaring that it was' against 
the Pope war was to be waged for the purpose of 
transferring the Holy See to the French capital. 
Both these circumstances affected Eavaillac. The 
idle tales of the soldiers kindled his fanaticism into 
a flame; the demand on tEe hospitality of the hostel- 
ries made it difficult to find shelter. At several inns 
his application for accommodation elicited the re- 
joinder of ^' no room," and it was in one of these 
that, as he turned to leave, his eyes fell on a large 
pointed knife with a stag-horn handle. The knife 
fascinated him ; it was just the weapon with which 
to slay a king who was contemplating war on the 
Holy Father; so he slipped it into his pocket and 
went out to resume his search for a lodging. At 
last, at The Three Pigeons, he was successful. It 
was situated opposite to the church of Saint Eoch, 
in a countrified lane which was long since trans- 
formed into the Rue St. Honore, and there Eavaillac 
made his home until his purpose was achieved. 

Day by day for nearly three weeks he left The 
Three Pigeons each morning to take up a patient 
vigil near the Louvre, and for as many nights he 
returned thither with his desire unfulfilled. Either 
Henry IV issued not from his palace, or, when he 
did, was too closely guarded. But at last there 
dawned a day in May when the monarch, depressed 
and ill at ease, was advised by his physician to seek 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 67 

relaxation in a drive. Acting on the suggestion, the 
king ordered his coach and, with but a small retinue, 
set out on a visit to a sick minister. Ere the little 
cavalcade had proceeded far, a block in one of the 
narrow streets of the city brought it to a halt. The 
watchful Ravaillac had followed, and hardly had 
the royal coach been brought to a standstill than he 
sprang forward and plunged his knife twice into 
Henry's body. 

That night there was a guest missing from The 
Three Pigeons. Seized red-handed, Eavaillac was 
soon within prison walls, whence two weeks later 
he issued to pay the penalty of his crime by bar- 
barous execution. " Sad and deathlike " in his 
countenance, '' naked in his shirt," with his mur- 
derous knife chained to one hand and a lighted torch 
in the other, he passed in a dung-cart through exe- 
crating crowds to his scaffold of torture and death. 
Nor was the fiendish justice of those days placated 
when the assassin had been seared with red-hot 
pincers, scalded with molten lead, and torn apart by 
horses chained to his arms and legs ; his father and 
mother were banished from France, all his kindred 
commanded to renounce the name of Eavaillac for 
ever, and the house in which he was born given to 
the flames. The marvel is that that consuming ven- 
geance spared The Three Pigeons. 

Not that the wanderer in Paris must expect to 
find that hostelry to-day. There are, it is true, some 



68 Old Paris 

old buildings along the Rue St. Honore, but The 
Three Pigeons has long disappeared. If, however, 
the curious pilgrim would gaze upon such ancient 
inns or drinking-shops as will enable him to realize 
the type of house in which Eavaillac lodged he can- 
not do better than explore the old narrow streets 
in the neighbourhood of the church of St. Merry. 
One of these, the Rue de Venise, is as ancient a thor- 
oughfare as is to be found in all Paris, and at the 
corner of the Rue Quincampoix is a building, now 
a low wine-shop, which as The Wooden Sword was 
in its day greatly in favour with musicians and Ra- 
cine, Boileau, and Marivaux. This district, too, is 
memorable in the annals of old Paris as the scene 
of John Law's famous Mississippi Scheme, one of 
those early get-rich-quick speculations which in 1720 
excited all classes of the community and made the 
Rue Quincampoix for weeks the centre of reckless 
gambling. The rents of the houses in the street 
soared from two hundred dollars a year to four thou- 
sand dollars a month, and a poor hunchback whose 
deformity provided a convenient writing-desk for 
brokers netted by a few days' use of his person in 
that novel manner a comfortable fortune of thirty 
thousand dollars. 

Of course The Wooden Sword shared in this mush- 
room fortune. Broking and speculating were thirst- 
creating occupations, and the tavern-keeper reaped 
a rich harvest where to-day Ms successor is content 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 69 

to serve low-priced absinthe over his zinc counter. 
But The Wooden Sword also acquired in those days 
of mad gambling an association of crime, for it was 
in this tavern that, aided by two libertine friends, 
the young Count Horn brutally murdered a man who 
was reputed to have won fabulous wealth through 
his speculations. 

If, to vary these memories of bloodshed, the wan- 
derer would for the moment make the acquaintance 
of another inn of old Paris distinguished only for its 
association with orderly industrial life, he may grat- 
ify his wish in the Eue Montorgueil, where he will 
find that Golden Compass Inn which was the head- 
quarters of country carriers for many generations 
before and after the bursting of the Mississippi bub- 
ble. ^' Its double entrance, blocked up with small 
butchers', tripe-dealers', and poulterers' stalls, 
opens on a huge yard, where fowls peck on heaps of 
golden dung, where ducks quack, and goats bleat 
under the eyes of some thirty horses, peaceful ten- 
ants of the ground floor, with their inquisitive heads 
thrust over the half-doors, through the low windows 
or open air holes. At the back, beneath the spacious 
shed, the carriages and carts are put up 'midst a 
healthy country smell of verdure and hay; and it 
really is a curious sight to see such a silent nook, 
with its farmyard, at the back of the noisy, populous, 
crowded street, full of workmen, pedlers, and shouts 
or cries of bubbling life and movement. ' ' 



70 Old Paris 

Another tavern of the mid-eighteenth century, 
The Basket of Flowers, revives for the right bank 
of the Seine those literary memories which make up 
so much of the history of the left-bank hostelries. 
The story is told by Rousseau in his " Confessions " 
and relates to himself, Diderot, and Condillac, one 
of his companions, it will be remembered, at the 
Hotel St, Quentin. '^ As we," he wrote, referring 
to some period between 1745 and 1747, '' lived at a 
great distance from one another, we all three met 
once a week at the Palais Royal, and dined together 
at The Basket of Flowers. These little weekly din- 
ners must have been exceedingly agTeeable to Dide- 
rot, for he, who nearly always failed to keep his other 
appointments, never missed one of them. On these 
occasions I drew up the plan of a periodical, to be 
called Le Persifleur, to be written by Diderot and 
myself alternatively. I sketched the outlines of the 
first number, and in this manner became acquainted 
with D'Alembert, to whom Diderot had spoken of 
it. However, unforeseen events stopped the way, 
and the project fell into abeyance." This was about 
the time when Diderot was busy with hack-work for 
the booksellers and not long before he began his 
memorable task as the chief of the encyclopsB- 
dists. 

While Diderot and his colleagues were, by their 
pens, preparing the way for the French Revolution, 
their labours were being forwarded by Louis XV 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 71 

and the libertines of his court. Following the licen- 
tious example of the Regent, the king devoted all his 
energies to sensual or low-class pleasures. Some 
of the less guilty of his excesses keep alive the mem- 
ory of a tavern which was the most famous example 
of its class. This tj^e of hostelry was known as a 
guinguette, and was to be found in greatest abun- 
dance in the suburbs or just outside the gates of 
the city. Many were little more than tents, but oc- 
casionally the tent and garden were adjuncts of a 
tavern of the usual kind. As Paul Lacroix has re- 
minded us, the guinguettes outside Paris were the 
most frequented, and were equipped with arbours, 
hidden in verdure, standing in a garden or shrub- 
bery. Hence their other name of Courtilles. The 
most celebrated of these places was The Royal 
Drummer, kept by Ramponeau at the Courtille des 
Porcherons. 

Of this tavern-keeper, the most popular in his day, 
Victor Fournel wrote that " his sense of humour, 
his witty remarks, his good-tempered, fat face, his 
Silenus-llke neck, and the gorgeous signboard upon 
which he was represented astride a hogshead, con- 
tributed, not less than the reputation of his cellar, 
to make his tavern a favourite resort of choice spir- 
its. All Paris went to see his establishment, and 
brilliant equipages might be seen at his door. The 
great people went there, just as they went to the 
markets and the Quai de Gesvres, to hear in all its 



72 Old Paris 

native beauty the slang which the works of Vade had 
made fashionable, and to which the younger scions 
of the nobility had become accustomed during their 
dances with the young women who sold fish and but- 
ter at the markets." Ramponeau owed the vogue 
of his tavern to the king himself, who often went 
thither in a disguise which did not conceal his iden- 
tity. To take part in the " candle-end balls " of 
such a resort afforded a new pleasure to the jaded 
taste of Louis XV, and the ribaldry heard there, the 
suggestive slang, the obscene wit furnished a new 
variety of conversation for those light-hearted court- 
iers who had been taught to abominate the grand 
style of the previous reign. So much was Rampo- 
neau the rage that his name was given to sauces or 
clothes or furniture; those who did not possess 
something a la Ramponeau were regarded with 
scorn in high society. And the fashion continued 
unabated until the eve of the Revolution, for Marie- 
Antoinette frequently visited The Royal Drummer 
and declared that she had never enjoyed herself 
more than at a wild farandole which was the 
climax of an entertainment at that delectable 
resort. 

Meantime, and while Ramponeau was still at the 
height of his fame, in another district of Paris, the 
Faubourg St. Antoine, an industrious brewer, An- 
toine Joseph Santerre by name, was quietly brewing 
his beer and tending his Hortensia Tavern on the 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 73 

Eue de Eeuilly, unconscious that to him would fall 
the reaping of some of the harvest being sown so 
light-heartedly by the aristocratic patrons of The 
Royal Drummer. 

That tavern-house of '' the sonorous Santerre " 
may still be seen on the Rue de Reuilly, little 
changed, save that it is no longer the Hortensia 
Tavern but an educational '^ establishment for 
young ladies. " It is worthy of note for the sake of 
a man of more unsullied fame than Santerre, for 
the stout old Samuel Johnson visited the place dur- 
ing his Paris trip and held converse with the brewer 
as to the price he paid for his malt and the number 
of barrels he filled every year. Fourteen years later 
the keeper of the Hortensia Tavern had other inter- 
ests than those of malt and beer ; as the result of his 
revolutionary leadership among the discontented in- 
habitants of his district he was made a major of the 
National Guard, and from that time onward he took 
a prominent position among the men who created the 
Revolution. History shows him conspicuous at the 
storming of the Bastille, and as leading the people 
of his faubourg in the assault on the Tuileries. 
Nay, he became a general, " General Hops " and 
" the frothy General " as the wits called him, and 
when the food supplies of Paris ran low he distin- 
guished himself by suggesting that the Parisians 
should '* rid themselves of useless pets." The city, 
he said, contained sufficient cats and dogs to eat up 



74 Old Paris 

daily the nutriment of fifteen hundred men. Cari- 
catures and satires were the only result of the ap- 
peal. One journalist at once calculated the number 
of sparrows in the city, found they reached the 
amazing total of over ten millions, and called upon 
' ' General Hops ' ' to order their immediate destruc- 
tion. But he of the " loud voice and timber head " 
was unmoved; '' my whole strength," he roared, 
" is, day and night, at the service of my fellow- 
citizens ; if they find me worthless, they will dismiss 
me; I will return, and brew beer." And it was 
thither the paths of glory eventually led him — 
back to his brewery aiid the Hortensia Tavern. But 
it was too late ; by his military neglect brewery and 
tavern had lost all their clients; and '' General 
Hops " ended his career in poverty. 

Yet there is little doubt he hugely enjoyed his 
brief authority. In a time when most people had to 
be content with the plain title of " citizen " it was 
a distinction indeed to be called " General " even 
though he was really nothing more than a tavern- 
keeper. 

One resplendent occasion, when he was an impor- 
tant guest of honour, no doubt lingered in his mem- 
ory until death, as it also probably did in the recol- 
lection of other participants. For among what may 
be called the social events of the French Eevolution, 
as distinguished from those events which imprinted 
an indelible stain on human nature, one of the most 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 75 

notable was that Sunday banquet which was held at 
White's Hotel in November, 1792, in celebration of 
the victories of the soldiers of the Eepublic. 

According to a newspaper account, this Sunday- 
feast at White's Hotel was " intended to be purely 
British ' ' but got out of hand to such an extent that 
it became international. The diners included Prus- 
sians, Austrians, Italians, Americans, and Holland- 
ers in addition to the British organizers and the 
French guests, while the overflowing rooms were 
^' decorated with civic and military trophies," and 
several bands enlivened the proceedings with mar- 
tial or revolutionary airs. The heroes of the eve- 
ning were Santerre and two of his comrades in arms, 
Generals Bruyere and Dillon, but in the retrospect 
it is equally interesting to note that the British con- 
tingent included John H. Stone, Robert Merry, Lord 
Edward Fitzgerald, and Thomas Paine. The first 
seems to have been the moving spirit of the ^' joy- 
ful occasion; " he was a political refugee who had 
already passed through some exciting adventures 
and had many more in store. Merry was something 
of a poet and had sung the praises of the Revolution 
in the " Laurel of Liberty," a service to '' the 
cause " unknown to or ignored by the crowd which 
had chased him through Paris with the cry of '' A 
la lanterne! " Fitzgerald was an Irish pupil of 
Rousseau, hot of blood and generous in his sympa- 
thies, and was marked for a violent death. That 



76 Old Paris 

Rights-of-Man Paine should have been of the com- 
pany was most natural of all. 

Given such hosts and guests the character of the 
toast-list may be easily divined. '' The Republic of 
France," drunk to trumpets and '' Qa Ira, Qa Ira; '* 
' ' The Armies of France, ' ' to the martial strains of 
' ' The Marseillaise ; " " Perpetual Union between 
the free people," to the song, " Oh Homme, mon 
frere; " and many another sentiment of kindred 
spirit. The enthusiasm reached its height when Sir 
Robert Smith and Lord Edward Fitzgerald sol- 
emnly '' renounced " their titles and pledged the 
toast of " The abolition of hereditary titles in Eng- 
land," an after-dinner indiscretion which resulted 
in the social ostracism of the former and the end of 
the army career of the latter. 

Out of that high-spirited festival at White's 
Hotel arose one of those magniloquent addresses 
and replies which were characteristic of the French 
Revolution. Before the orators or orations had 
grown incoherent it was '' ordered by acclamation " 
that an address be presented to the National Con- 
vention. That document, inscribed to the '' citizen 
legislators," set forth that *' nations, enlightened 
by your example, blush at having bowed for so long 
a period their servile heads under a yoke degrading 
to human nature." The reply of the President of 
the Convention did not fail of being equal to the 
occasion. '* Royalty in Europe," he declaimed, '' is 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 77 

either destroyed, or on the point of perishing on the 
ruins of feudalism, and the declaration of rights, 
placed by the side of thrones, is a devouring fire 
which will consume them." , 

Who that reads of that Sunday banquet in the 0-- 

time-stained newspaper of November, 1793, would 
imagine the September massacres were but two 
months old? The quaint old print is so calm-look- 
ing; the toasts and speeches and songs, " Oh 
Homme, mon frere! " have such a spirit of inex- 
haustible brotherhood. 

But all was not quite so well in that best of Re- 
publics as the vinous orators at White's Hotel pre- 
tended. Elsewhere in France, and notably at Caen 
in distant Normandy, were some who were sadly 
convinced that the millennium was not yet. And out 
of that conviction was soon to be shaped a deed 
which was to give another hostelry of Paris an as- 
sociation in lurid contrast to the festal memory of 
White's Hotel. 

While, then, in Paris there were enthusiasts of 
all nations ready with their eulogy of the ' ' enlight- 
ened example " of France, in the Norman town 
where William the Conqueror was buried a young 
woman named Charlotte Corday was harbouring 
quite different thoughts. Imbued with those ideals 
of civic virtue and stoical heroism of which she had 
made the acquaintance in the pages of Plutarch, and 
inspired by that text of the Apocrypha which told 



78 Old Paris 

how ^' the Lord made choice of Judith to deliver 
Israel," that fair young Norman, beautiful in form 
and countenance, put from her all thoughts of love 
and wedded happiness and dedicated her life to a 
purpose worthy of Eoman fortitude. Her soul had 
been moved to horror at the crimes perpetrated in 
the name of liberty, and her hatred of the cruelty 
of the Eevolution centred specially in the person of 
the bloodthirsty Marat. Keeping, then, her resolve 
secret in her own bosom, she, on the specious plea 
of taking refuge in England, bade her aunt good- 
bye, left a note of farewell for her father, and 
mounted the diligence for Paris. Even in the coach 
an opportunity came to embrace that life of domestic 
peace most native to her sex, for a fellow passenger 
fell captive to her beauty and made her an earnest 
offer of marriage; but Charlotte Corday had left 
a lover behind in Caen and in his person had taken 
her final farewell of wifely destiny. 

Her coach journey ended in the Rue Notre-Dame- 
des-Victoires Nationales, and there she hired a man 
to take her to the hostelry of which she had the ad- 
dress. The card bore this inscription: " Madame 
Grollier, Tient I'Hotel de la Providence, Rue des 
Vieux-Augustins, No. 19, pres la Place de la Vic- 
toire-National. On y trouve des appartements 
meubles a tons prix. A Paris." Her wants were 
soon supplied from those " furnished apartments at 
all prices," and while the servant was putting her 




CHARLOTTE CORDAT. 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 79 

room in order she plied him with questions as to the 
condition of affairs in Paris. What, she asked, did 
the citizens think of Marat? Very highly, said the 
waiter, '^ but he has been ill for some time now, and 
seldom appears in the Convention." 

This was on Thursday; the next day Charlotte 
Corday had a visitor at the hotel ; and on Saturday 
morning she went out and found her way to the 
Palais Eoyal where, for forty sous, she purchased 
a long sharp-pointed knife with an ebony handle. 
On one of these days, in the quietness of her room 
at the hotel, she wrote that '^ Address to the French 
People " which was to be her apologia, and then 
penned and dispatched to Marat a letter asking him 
for an interview in the interests of the " service of 
France." Following the letter in person, she was 
repulsed from Marat's door on the plea that he was 
too ill to see any one. 

Nothing daunted by that rebuff, Charlotte Corday, 
late in the evening of July 13th, 1793, dressed her- 
self for the last time in her room at the Hotel de la 
Providence, covering herself with a brown cloak and 
finishing her toilette with a high-crowned hat 
adorned with a black cockade. On reaching Marat's 
squalid house no plea that he was ill sufficed to turn 
her from his door, and at last, above the altercation 
in the passage, the voice of Marat was heard order- 
ing the visitor to be allowed in. The Friend of the 
People, already a doomed victim from the loathsome 



80 Old Paris 

skin disease from which he was suffering, sat half 
upright and almost naked in the warm bath from 
which alone he could derive some relief, and across 
the bath lay a board with writing materials. 

Brief was the interview between that strangely- 
contrasted couple. A question from Marat as to the 
condition of things in Caen; a reply that eighteen 
deputies were planning a rising ; a ' ' what are their 
names? " from Marat; and then, as he wrote them 
down and threatened '' their heads shall fall within 
a fortnight," the fair visitor drew forth her knife 
and plunged it with unerring aim into the side of 
her victim. With one despairing cry, Marat fell 
back in his bath dead. 

And now the maiden from Caen had no more need 
of her room in the Hotel de la Providence ; she had 
accomplished her mission and went cheerfully to 
that prison and scaffold of which she had counted 
the cost. She had no statue, to be inscribed ' ' Greater 
than Brutus," as her last-hour admirer suggested, 
and even the hostelry which gave her shelter until 
she had achieved her heroic purpose was some years 
ago pulled down to provide space for a new public 
building. For many years, however, that high 
house with its iron balconies was an object of deep 
interest, and especially that room, looking out on 
the street, which Charlotte Corday so willingly ex- 
changed for the condemned cell of a prison. 

Nothing is more in keeping with the history of 




DEATH OF MARAT. 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 81 

the inns and taverns and hotels of the right bank of 
the Seine thap that it was from a window of one 
of the latter, the Royal Hotel on the Rue St. Honore, 
the first shot was fired in the Revolution of July. 

No monarch either so richly deserved to lose his 
crown or lost it so speedily as Charles X. His ob- 
tuseness is one of the mysteries of royal history. 
Such ordinances as those by which he attempted to 
*' save the face " of his defeated minister would 
have roused the most phlegmatic of subjects, much 
less the volatile Parisians. The abrogation of the 
freedom of the press was bad enough, but to dissolve 
a newly-elected chamber before it had met and lay 
down fresh conditions for the election of its suc- 
cessor awoke more than journalists and printers to 
the realization of the king's desire to revive the old 
despotism. The rebellion, then, spread with start- 
ling rapidity. To the thirty thousand newspaper 
men and printers whose loss of occupation gave 
them freedom to roam the streets and shout ven- 
geance against the government, there were quickly 
added many more thousands of workers whose em- 
ployers had turned them adrift with the object of 
adding to the difficulties of the king and his minis- 
ters. 

Hence the tumultuous mobs which packed the 
streets of Paris on the 27th of July. The crowd was 
specially dense in that Rue St. Honore where once 
stood Ravaillac's inn of The Three Pigeons, and it 



82 Old Paris 

was in that thoroughfare the first blood of the Three 
Days' Revolution was shed. The immediate cause 
was the effort made by a small detachment of guards 
to enter the Rue St. Honore by a small side street, 
an effort in which the soldiers were so closely 
pressed upon and pelted with all kinds of missiles 
that for a time they were unable to advance or re- 
tire. It was at this juncture a fowling-piece was 
discharged at the guards from the windows of the 
Royal Hotel. One story credits an American with 
that reckless act; it seems more probable, however, 
that the culprit was an Englishman named Foulkes, 
neither the first nor the last representative of those 
busybodies of his nation who have so often exploited 
themselves in Paris in times of political upheaval. 

That unprovoked fusillade, however, met condign 
punishment. The officer in charge of the guards, 
startled by an attack for which his men had given 
no cause, ordered his men to fire, and the volley they 
directed at the hotel window whence they had been 
attacked put an effectual end to Mr. Foulkes' am- 
bition to pose as a revolutionary leader. That quick 
Nemesis was thoroughly deserved, for but for that 
inexcusable shot the July Revolution might have 
been effected without bloodshed. 

Whether Louis-Philippe, whom that Revolution 
placed on the throne of France, agreed with the en- 
thusiasts who characterized it as " glorious " may 
be gravely doubted. In the course of his brief reign 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 83 

he had good reason to realize the truth of that his- 
torian who said that the soil of France was *' sown 
with assassins." And one of those assassins blamed 
that same '' glorious Revolution " for his conver- 
sion into a parricide. This was Louis Aliband, an- 
other maker of unenviable history for the inns of 
Paris. 

When, after his attempt by a cane-gun on the life 
of the king, his past career was unearthed with that 
thorough attention to biographical detail of which 
an example was set in the case of Ravaillac, it was 
discovered that he was the son of a tavern-keeper, 
and that prior to his assault on Louis-Philippe his 
chief home had been in a poor hostelry on the Rue 
de Valois Batave. The evidence of the hotel-keeper 
and his porter showed that Aliband was a youth of 
idle and dissolute habits; that he did not usually 
leave his bed until noon, and then went out to fre- 
quent low-class cafes until past midnight; and that 
he was in debt for a considerable sum to the land- 
lord and porter alike. Now and again he would 
spend hours in his room writing ; if he talked at all 
the usual burden of his conversation was his own 
misery and determination to commit suicide. De- 
spite his protestation at his trial that he had no pre- 
^ tensions to be placed on the list of famous regicides, 
his failure in life, his wandering habits, and his deed 
and its punishment place him and his hostelry noto- 
riety in the same category as Ravaillac. 



84 Old Paris 

Here, however, an end may be made of chroniclmg 
the history of such inns and taverns as perpetuate 
the basest traits of human nature ; it will be a relief 
to revive the memory of a hostelry which, although 
it illustrates the meanness of that nature in one 
respect, in another is flattering to humanity. 

Somewhere, then, about the year 1836 a Parisian 
named Tonny was master of a hostelry on the Rue 
Louis-le-Grand known as the Hotel Britannique. 
Perhaps M. Tonny had chosen that title on the 
springes-to-catch-woodcocks principle; at any rate, 
either the designation or some other desirable qual- 
ity attracted to M. Tonny 's establishment a guest of 
the name of Douglas. He promised to be a valuable 
patron, for, as he explained, he required accommo- 
dation not only for himself but also for his wife and 
five children, to say nothing of the family retinue 
of five servants. There was one little matter, how- 
ever, in which Mr. Douglas felt sure he could rely 
upon M. Tonny for temporary adjustment. He and 
his family and retinue had, he explained, been re- 
siding at another hotel in Paris where the charges, 
when pay-day came round, were found to be ex- 
orbitant. Indeed, the bill was so considerable that, 
pending the receipt of money from England, he was 
not able to meet it. If, however, M. Tonny would 
meet that bill for him he, Mr. Douglas, was prepared 
to transfer his entire establishment to the Hotel 
Britannique. 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 85 

Evidently this was M. Tonny's first introduction 
to the canny Scot, or it may be that Mr. Douglas put 
his case in such an engaging manner that the master 
of the Hotel Britannique thought it would be folly 
to turn away such a large addition to his guest-list. 
Whatever may have been the deciding cause, M. 
Tonny assumed the responsibility for the Douglas 
debt, and the whole clan, plus the five servants, came 
over to the Hotel Britannique. 

For several weeks all went well, but when at 
length a considerable payment became due, Mr. 
Douglas suddenly disappeared. It is true he was 
considerate enough to send M. Tonny a letter ex- 
plaining his absence, and that allayed the suspicions 
of the kindly hotel-keeper until, shortly after, Mrs. 
Douglas was also missing. Ten of the party were 
left, the five children and as many servants, and 
these were so closely watched and were so lacking 
in funds that they had no opportunity to emulate 
the example of the heads of the household. The 
months went by and at length several years elapsed, 
and still M. Tonny's only security for the Douglas 
debt consisted of the ten mouths and ten bodies 
which were daily adding to the total by the con- 
sumption of food and the occupancy of beds. 

At length, however, tender parental longings ap- 
pear to have been awakened in the hearts of the 
absconding father and mother, and they appealed 
to M. Tonny for the release of their offspring and 



86 Old Paris 

their servants. M. Tonny replied that he would be 
delighted to grant the request on receipt of the 
twenty thousand francs now due to him. But the 
parental affection of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas was not 
equal to such a severe financial strain, and so they 
put the law in motion to test whether a hotel-keeper 
was within his rights in detaining much-loved chil- 
dren and faithful servants as a security for filthy 
lucre. The Paris tribunal decided he was not. The 
president of the court did warmly compliment M. 
Tonny on his ' ' honourable ' ' behaviour, but assured 
him the law did not sanction the detention of the 
children and servants even in so desirable a prison 
as the Hotel Britannique. True, the court also re- 
served to M. Tonny his claim upon the Douglas 
parents, but that was about as realizable as Villon's 
snows of yester-year. 

All this happened about the time Emerson paid 
his first visit to Paris, and it would have been pleas- 
ant to learn that he had given his patronage to so 
deserving a man as M. Tonny. The sage of Con- 
cord, however, does not seem to have been aware 
of the existence of the Hotel Britannique ; or, if he 
were, he elected by preference the Hotel Montmo- 
renci on the Boulevard Montmartre, finally changing 
his quarters to a pension. He was not particularly 
happy in Paris, though he felt that if he had friends 
in the city he might have derived some enjoyment 
from the life of the cafes and restaurants. As it 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 87 

was, ^* I was sorry," lie wrote, '' to find that in 
leaving Italy I had left for ever that air of antiquity 
and history which her towns possess, and in coming 
hither hsd come to a loud, New York of a place." 

Had Emerson delayed his visit a few years he 
might have profited by the gentle satire which 
Thackeray was to provide in his '' Paris Sketch 
Book ' ' — satire which takes one back to the expe- 
rience of those two Dutchmen who made the usual 
mistake of herding with their own countrymen. 
Thackeray's advice to strangers gives an early ac- 
count of a hostelry which, reconstructed and mod- 
ernized, still exists on the Eue de Rivoli. " If you 
are a stranger in Paris," he wrote, '' listen to the 
words of Titmarsh. If you cannot speak a syllable 
of French, and love English comfort, clean rooms, 
breakfasts, and waiters; if you would have plenti- 
ful dinners, and are not particular (as how should 
you be?) concerning wine; if, in this foreign coun- 
try, you will have your English companions, your 
porter, your friend, and your brandy and water — 
do not listen to any of these commissioner fellows, 
but with your best English accent shout out boldly, 
' Meurice ! ' and straightway a man will step for- 
ward to conduct you to the Rue de Eivoli." 

Not all the patrons of the Hotel Meurice in the 
mid-nineteenth century were of that insular British 
type described so scornfully by Thackeray. An ex- 
ception should be made in favour of John Ruskin 



88 Old Paris 

and his dog Wisie. The latter, a sagacious white 
Spitz, had been given to Ruskin in Venice, and kept 
him company there in St. Mark's Place, looking out, 
from a window ledge, on the manners and customs 
of the city. One of Wisie 's subsequent adventures 
enriched the Hotel Meurice with an association 
which will appeal to all lovers of dogs. 

" Eeaching Paris," Euskin wrote, " he consid- 
ered it incumbent upon him to appear unconscious 
of the existence of that city or of the Tuileries gar- 
dens and Rue Rivoli, since they were not St. Mark's 
Place ; — but, half asleep one evening, on a sofa in 
the entresol at Meurice 's and hearing a bark in the 
street which sounded Venetian, — sprang through 
the window in expectation of finding himself on the 
usual ledge — and fell fifteen feet to the pavement. 
As I ran down, I met him rushing up the hotel 
stairs (he had gathered himself from the stones in 
an instant,) bleeding and giddy; he staggered 
round two or three times, and fell helpless to the 
floor. I don't know if young ladies' dogs faint, 
really, when they are hurt. He, Wisie, did not 
faint, nor even moan, but he could not stir, except 
in cramped starts and shivers. I sent for what vet- 
erinary help was within reach, and heard that the 
dog might recover, if he could be kept quiet for a 
day or two in a dog-hospital. But my omnibus 
was at the door — for the London train. In the 
very turn and niche of time I heard that Macdonald 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 89 

of St. Martin's was in the hotel, and would take 
charge of Wisie for the time necessary. The poor 
little speechless, luckless, wistfully gazing doggie 
was tenderly put in a pretty basket (going to be 
taken where? thinks the beating heart,) looks at his 
master to read what he can in the sad face — can 
make out nothing; is hurried out of the inexorable 
door, downstairs; finds himself more nearly dead 
next day, and among strangers. {Two miles away 
from Meurice's, along the Boulevard, it was.) 

' ' He takes and keeps counsel with himself on that 
matter. Drinks and eats what is given, gratefully; 
swallows his medicine obediently; stretches his 
limbs from time to time. There was only a wicket- 
gate, Jie saw, between the Boulevard and him. Si- 
lently, in the early dawn of the fourth or fifth day 
— I think — he leaped it, and along two miles of 
Parisian Boulevard came back to Meurice's. I do 
not believe there was ever a more wonderful piece 
of instinct certified. For Macdonald received him, 
in astonishment, — and Wisie trusted Macdonald to 
bring him to his lost master again." 

Another association of the Hotel Meurice links 
that establishment with the romantic story of a left- 
handed queen of the Second Empire. In the days of 
his exile in England Louis Napoleon made the ac- 
quaintance of Eliza Howard, who was perhaps the 
most famous courtesan of her time, a woman of ex- 
quisite figure and head and features comparable to 



90 Old Paris 

a masterpiece of Greek sculpture. So great was 
her attacliment to the aspirant to the throne of 
France that to aid him in the prosecution of his 
schemes she placed at his disposal the vast wealth 
she had amassed in her profession, and when Louis 
Napoleon returned to Paris in 1848 she followed 
him and took up her quarters at the Hotel Meurice.. 
At that time Miss Howard entertained the ambition 
of becoming actual queen of France, and when that 
hope was destroyed through Napoleon falling a vic- 
tim to the charms of Mile, de Montijo, her fury was 
terrible. " Sire," she wrote to her former lover, 
' ' I could readily have sacrificed myself to a political 
necessity. But I cannot pardon you for immolating 
me to a caprice." Although the Emperor pur- 
chased her silence by the gift of a million dollars 
and a title, she could not resist annoying the Em- 
press by driving in the Bois de Boulogne in an open 
carriage with servants in the imperial livery. 

But inasmuch as at the beginning of this chapter 
it was stated that some of the inns and taverns of 
the right bank of the Seine are notable for their 
connection with that political strife which has al- 
ways entered so largely into the life of Paris, it is 
time to turn to the Hotel of the Senate, which still 
stands in the Eue de Tournon. In its outward 
aspect it has been greatly improved since Alphonse 
Daudet described its courtyard as "black and 
damp," and the windows in its dining-room as 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 91 

*' cloudy; " but its chief glory still is that it can 
yet show the room in which Leon Gambetta lived 
when he was laying the foundation of his future 
fame as the dictator of France. 

Even in those early years, ^' round-backed, blind 
of one eye, and inflamed of face ' ' though he was, his 
was the most pervading presence among the Gascon 
guests of the hotel. Daudet knew him then and has 
left on record a vivid picture of his appearance in 
the dining-room of the Hotel of the Senate. 

*' As soon as he entered, the other horse-heads 
sprang up around the table and greeted him with a 
formidable neigh: 

'' ' Ha! ha! ha! here's Gambetta! ' 

*' They pronounced it, the monsters, Ghamhet- 
thah, and a mouthful it was ! 

'' He, sitting noisily down, spread himself over 
the table, or threw himself back in his chair, pero- 
rated, rapped with his fist, laughed till the windows 
shook, dragged the table-cloth about him, spat to a 
distance, got drunk without drinking, snatched the 
dishes from your hands, the words from your 
mouth, and, after having talked the whole time, 
went away without having said a single thing ; Gau- 
dissart and Gazonal in one; that is to say, all that 
can be imagined most provincial, most sonorous, 
and most tiresome. I remember that once I invited 
to our table a little employe of the city, a cold lad, 
very self-contained, who had just made his debut in 



92 Old Paris 

the Charivari, signing the name of Henri Eochefort 
to theatre articles in a prose as sober and> reserved 
as his own person. Gambetta, to do honours to the 
journalist, seated him on his right, the side of his 
sound eye, and soaked him all the evening with his 
eloquence, so well and so long that the future chair- 
man of the Committee of Barricades carried away 
from our dinner a stupendous headache which cut 
short our relations." 

From the same chronicler we learn that not all 
the literary Bohemian interest of Paris is confined 
to the Latin Quarter. Even the Brasseries, which 
are nothing more than taverns under a more pre- 
tentious name, can boast their associations with the 
sons of genius. There was '^ The Brasserie," for 
example, that tavern on the Eue des Martyrs which 
arrogated to itself the definite article as though it 
were the one and supreme haunt of its kind, and 
where " Murger reigned absolute at the middle 
table, the Homer and Columbus of this little world." 
But he was not the only notable who frequented 
that resort; through the clouds of smoke Daudet 
caught sight of Pierre Dupont, ^' old already at 
forty-five, fat and stooping, ' ' and with a voice burnt 
away by alcohol to a hoarse rattle; and Gustave 
Mathieu, with his Henry IV air and a wild flower 
in his buttonhole ; and Fernand Desnoyers, ' ' with 
the braggart airs of a corsair; " and Charles Bau- 
delaire, ' ' tormented in art by a thirst for the undis- 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 93 

cover able, in philosophy by the alluring terror of 
the unknown." There was, too, the table of the 
thinkers, men who neither said anything nor wrote, 
but only thought; and, in another corner, the art- 
ists and sculptors crowded together; while models, 
faded and fresh, had their own nook elsewhere. 

But '' The Brasserie " did not enjoy that monop- 
oly which its name suggested. On the testimony of 
Albert D. Vandam, that '' Englishman in Paris " 
who, as future pages will show, was the industrious 
Boswell of the convivial resorts of the French cap- 
ital, the Brasserie L'Esperance on the Faubourg 
St. Denis could compete with its rival on the Rue 
des Martyrs in literary association at least. This 
tavern was the favourite resort of fimile Erckmann 
and Louis G. C. A. Chatrian, the novelists who in 
their collaboration were so self-sacrificing of iden- 
tity that their books might have been the work of 
one personality. Year in and out one table was re- 
served for the two friends, Erckmann of lank build 
and swarthy complexion, Chatrian short and fat and 
florid. When Vandam first saw the two at the 
L'Esperance they had already published several 
volumes, none of which, however, had made the 
least sensation. In fact, so apathetic was the read- 
ing public that one evening when the depressed pair 
were joined by a friend, Erckmann was overheard 
to declare that the best thing he and his colleague 
could do would be to drown themselves. Their 



94 Old Paris 

friend, who was also their publisher, seemed to re- 
gard the idea as an inspiration. " If you carried 
out that resolve," he said, " it might cause a sen- 
sation, and I should be sure of getting rid of the 
whole of the stock." But Erckmann and Chatrian 
lived to write " Le Conscrit de 1813 " and hence- 
forward had no need to think of suicide as a means 
to the selling of their books. 

As will appear in succeeding chapters, it is the 
cafes of Paris which are richest in literary legends, 
but it must not be forgotten that in addition 
to the hostelries of Bohemian fame already men- 
tioned, there are others not even situated in 
the Latin Quarter which have their memories of 
wayward genius. Many artists have sought relief 
from disappointed hope or themes for new canvases 
with which to tempt fickle fame in the cabarets which 
have so largely taken the place of the less reputable 
inns and taverns of olden days. Such a haunt was 
that cabaret on the Boulevard de Clichy where 
^fijdouard Manet discerned the subject of his " Ser- 
vante de bocks," a type of those waitresses of pic- 
turesque pose and easy gait who can manipulate 
many glasses of beer without spilling the contents 
of any. Of more poignant memory are those squalid 
taverns of Les Halles, in one of which that ill-bal- 
anced genius, G^erard de Nerval, added some pages 
to his weird " Le Reve et la Vie " on the night be- 
fore his pitiful suicide. 



Inns and Taverns of the Right Bank 95 

Nor should the underworld of Parisian tavern life 
be forgotten, especially such defiled haunts of vice 
as the Tavern of Pere Lunette or The Cellar or The 
Angel Gabriel. They have many features in com- 
mon, — the huge zinc counter, the obscene prints 
and inscriptions on the walls, the long and spacious 
wooden bench on which the topers may repose while 
recovering from their potations, the rows of casks 
of beer, and, above all, the motley clients, men and 
women of pallid or evil mien fresh from a prison 
cell or on their way thither. Such resorts are, how- 
ever, gradually being demolished, a regeneration of 
old Paris not to be regretted even by the most ar- 
dent lover of the past. 



CHAPTER IV 

CAFES OF THE LEFT BANK 

Although the cafe of modern Paris might, in 
many cases, be more truthfully designated a res- 
taurant, it must not be forgotten that its progenitor 
in old Paris was faithful to its name as indicating 
a house where coffee was sold ready for drinking. 

To recall those early days when the cafe was a 
cafe is to revive the vexed problem of the first dis- 
covery of coffee and its introduction into Europe. 
In the absence of definite information as to how it 
came to pass that some man at some time in some 
land first realized the seductive use to which the 
berry of the coffee-tree could be put, many fanciful 
stories have been invented, the most picturesque 
being that legend which credits the prior of a mon- 
astery in Arabia with observing how frisky goats 
became after they had fed on the coffee-berry and 
arguing that his indolent monks might be rendered 
a little more brisk if they partook of the same diet. 
Perhaps, however, this is an extreme case of rea- 
soning from an effect back to a cause. 

What seems fairly well established is that the 
first European to mention coffee was Eauwolf, the 
German botanist, who made a journey to the Levant 

96 



Cafes of the Left Bank 97 

in 1573. Another early reference is found in the 
travel book of George Sandys, the poet who gave a 
start to classical scholarship in America by trans- 
lating Ovid's '' Metamorphoses " during his pio- 
neer days in Virginia. He was already a consider- 
able traveller, for, in 1610, he spent a year in Tur- 
key, Egypt and Palestine, and in his narrative of 
those wanderings he recorded that although the 
Turks were destitute of taverns, " yet have they 
coffa-houses, which something resemble them. 
There sit they, chatting most of the day, and sip of a 
drink called coffa (of the berry that it is made of), 
in little China dishes, as hot as they can suffer it; 
black as soot and tasting not much unlike it, which 
helpeth, as they say, digestion and procureth alac- 
rity." To the same effect is the statement of 
Olearius, who entertained his readers with a lively 
account of the coffee-houses of Persia, which were 
frequented by poets and historians who indulged in 
lengthy speeches and satirical tales. 

Sandys made no effort to introduce to his fellow 
countrymen that ' ' black as soot ' ' drink ; his ver- 
dict of ' ' tasting not much unlike it ' ' proves that it 
did not appeal to his palate ; and he had been in his 
grave almost a decade before the drink was intro- 
duced to London. It was later still before Paris 
made its acquaintance, for in the rivalry between 
the two cities as to which first became a coffee- 
drinking community there is no question that the 



98 Old Paris 

French capital must take second place. It should 
be sufficient distinction for the Parisian that al- 
though he took to coffee later than the Londoner he 
speedily outstripped him in the art of making it to 
perfection. 

Of course it was a traveller, Jean de Thevenot by 
name, who first drank coffee in Paris. During his 
wanderings in the Levant he not only learned the 
useful qualities of the beverage but fell captive to 
its flavour, and when he returned to Paris he carried 
with him a supply of the berry. This was in 1657, 
five years later than the opening of the first coffee- 
house in London, but Thevenot did not succeed in 
making any converts to the drink among Parisians. 
Something more spectacular than his methods was 
required to establish the '' outlandish drink " in the 
favour of his fellow countrymen. A dozen years 
later that want was supplied. In 1669 there arrived 
in the French capital Soliman Aga, an ambassador 
from the Sultan of Turkey, and he brought with him 
not merely sufficient coifee for his own needs but a 
supply ample for presentation purposes. And Soli- 
man Aga had also provided himself with the stage 
properties which were to succeed where Thevenot 
had failed. The elegance of the manner in whicli 
the drink was prepared '^ recommended it to the eye, 
and charmed the women: the brilliant porcelain 
cups in which it was poured; the napkins fringed 
with gold, and the Turkish slaves on their knees 



Cafes of the Left Bank 99 

presenting it to the ladies, seated on the ground on 
cushions, turned the heads of the Parisian dames." 
These embellishments would have been sufficient to 
commend a liquor less attractive in look and taste 
than coffee ; they were adequate at any rate to make 
the beverage a theme of fashionable gossip, and 
time would do the rest. 

When, then, an Armenian named Pascal set up 
a coffee-house as an attraction of the Fair of St. 
Germain, in 1672, it seemed probable that his enter- 
prise would be speedily rewarded. Pascal was, how- 
ever, just a little too soon, or did not realize the 
kind of patronage for which it was necessary to 
cater at that juncture. His coffee-house was little 
more than a not very high-class tavern in which 
beer was also sold and smoking allowed. It was 
not, indeed, the kind of place likely to be frequented 
by the devotees of the new drink. Hence the first 
cafe of Paris proved a failure, and it was not until 
a Florentine named Frangois Procope appeared 
upon the scene that the prejudice created by Pas- 
cal's premature effort was overcome. Taking 
warning by the example of his predecessor, Procope 
fitted up his cafe in a superior style, and in 1689 the 
refined Parisian was able to sample the new drink 
amid environment of the most irreproachable char- 
acter. 

From that hour the future of the cafe in Paris 
was assured. The Parisian was waiting for it with- 



100 Old Paris 

out being quite conscious of the fact. For many 
generations the inn or tavern had served his social 
purpose; but when he began, as Walpole said, to 
live " in perpetual opera," to imagine himself 
young when he was old, he had need of a different 
public stage. And that the cafe gave him. The 
most friendly observer cannot ignore the fact that 
the consuming ambition of the Parisian is to pose. 
'' To poser is the Frenchman's chief delight. He 
prefers it even to dawdling on the Boulevards, or 
making epigrams, or to saying some profoundly 
witty or sarcastic thing which will make his genial 
brethren hail him as a second Voltaire." And no- 
where can he strike an attitude with more effect 
than in the cafe. 

In less than a century, then, after the Cafe Pro- 
cope had opened its doors, there were six or seven 
hundred similar establishments in Paris. And that 
was all to the good of the city's social life. *''I 
think I may safely assert," said a writer of the late 
eighteenth century, " that it is to the establishment 
of so many cafes in Paris that is due the urbanity 
and mildness discernible upon most faces. Before 
they existed, nearly everybody passed his time at 
the cabaret, where even business matters were dis- 
cussed. Since their establishment, people assemble 
there to hear what is going on, drinking and playing 
only in moderation, and the consequence is, that 
they are more civil and polite, at least in appear- 



Cafes of the Left Bank 101 

ance." That philosophical reflection was often 
made in praise of coffee. It had already been eulo- 
gized as a " wakeful and civil drink," and its usur- 
pation of the place of ale, beer, and wine welcomed 
in the interests of industry and sobriety. 

For the most lively and at the same time mildly 
satirical pictures of the earliest cafes of Paris we 
must turn to the '' Persian Letters " of Montes- 
quieu. By the pen of two Persians on a visit to 
Paris he gives now a general picture of a cafe and 
anon several character sketches of the men who 
frequented those haunts, and it should be remem- 
bered that Montesquieu wrote in the first quarter 
of the eighteenth century. Even then, however, he 
was able to report that coffee was much used in 
Paris, and that there were a great many public 
houses where it was sold. '^ In some of these 
houses," he added, *' they talk of news, in others 
they play draughts. There is one where they pre- 
pare the coffee in such a manner that it inspires the 
drinkers of it with wit; at least, of all those who 
frequent it, there is not one person in four who does 
not think he has more wit after he has entered that 
house. But what offends me in these wits is, that 
they do not make themselves useful to their country, 
and that they trifle away their talents on childish 
things. For instance, at my arrival in Paris, I 
found them very warm about the most trifling con- 
troversy imaginable ; they were disputing about the 



102 Old Paris 

character of an old Greek poet, of whose country, 
and the time of his death, they have been ignorant 
these two thousand years. Both parties allowed he 
was an excellent poet; the question was only 
whether he had more or less merit than he deserved. 
Each was for settling the value, but amidst these 
distributers of reputation some made better weight 
than others; such was the quarrel." Could Mon- 
tesquieu have revisited Paris more than two cen- 
turies later he would have discovered that the pre- 
cise degree of the genius of Homer was still a matter 
of warm debate in at least one of the cafes of the 
city. 

Literary quibblers, however, were not the only 
patrons of those early cafes. Montesquieu also tells 
of the geometrician whom he met on the Pont-Neuf 
and accompanied to a certain coffee-house. '' I ob- 
served that our geometrician was received there 
with the utmost officiousness, and that the coffee- 
house boys paid him much more respect than two 
musquetters, who were in a corner of the room. As 
for him, he seemed as if he thought himself in an 
agreeable place; for he unwrinkled his brows a 
little, and laughed, as if he had not the least tincture 
of the geometrician in him. In the meantime he 
measured everything that was said in conversation. 
He resembled a person in a garden, who with a 
sword cuts off all the heads of the flowers that rise 
above the rest. A martyr to regularity, he was of- 



Cafes of the Left Bank 103 

fended at every start of wit, as a tender eye is by 
too strong a light. Nothing was indifferent to him, 
if so be it were true; accordingly his conversation 
was singular. He was come that day out of the 
country, with a person who had been to view a noble 
seat and magnificent gardens; but he saw nothing 
but a building of sixty feet in front, by five and 
thirty in depth, and a wood of ten acres ; he wished 
that the rules of perspective had been observed, that 
the walks of the avenues might have appeared 
throughout of one and the same breadth: and he 
would have laid down for that end, an infallible 
method." All his talk was in the same vein: a re- 
port of a battle set him off describing the curves 
taken by the bombs; the mention of an inundation 
reminded him that he had foretold a flood. 

If other cafes were spared the infliction of such 
a calculating bore, they were not deficient in singular 
characters. Thus Montesquieu has left us the por- 
trait of that discontented mortal who bemoaned that 
while he had a fortune of fifteen thousand livres a 
year in land he had nothing in money. He lamented 
his sorrows aloud in a cafe, and it was in the same 
cafe another complained that while he possessed two 
hundred thousand livres in bank-notes he had not 
an acre of land to call his own. These were not the 
only human curiosities in the cafe; " Happening to 
turn my head, ' ' Montesquieu remarks, ' ' I saw a 
man who made such grimaces, that one would have 



104 Old Paris 

thought him possessed. ' Who can we trust for the, 
future/ exclaimed he. ' There is a villain whom I 
had so good an opinion of, and thought so sincerely 
my friend, that I lent him money : he paid me again ! 
what black perfidy and ingratitude is this ! Let him 
do what he will, he will never be able to retrieve my 
good opinion.' ... At last I saw an old man enter, 
pale and thin, whom I knew to be a coffee-house 
politician before he sat down: he was not one of 
those who are never to be intimidated by disasters, 
but always prophesy of victories and success: he 
was one of those timorous wretches who are always 
boding ill. ' Our affairs,' said he, ' are in a very 
bad situation in Spain, we have no horse upon the 
frontiers ; and it is to be feared that the prince Pio, 
who has a considerable body, will levy contributions 
upon the whole province of Languedoc' There sat 
opposite to me a philosopher of a tolerably shabby 
appearance, who seemed to dispise the politician, 
and shrugged his shoulders in token of contempt, 
whilst the other raised his tone of voice. I ap- 
proached him, and he whispered in my ear, ' You 
see how that coxcomb talks of his apprehensions for 
Languedoc ; and I for my part yesterday perceived 
a spot in the sun, which, if it should increase, might 
cause a general dissolution of nature, and yet I did 
not say a single word about it.' " Obviously 
the type of cafe frequenter was fi:xed many years 
asro. 



Cafes of the Left Bank 105 

FranQois Procope, however, is usually credited 
with having had a much more limited constituency 
in view. As the date of the opening of his cafe 
harmonized with the opening of the Comedie-Fran- 
§aise it has been supposed that his primary object 
was to cater for the actors of that theatre. The fact 
that they were both situated in the same street — 
then the Rue des Fosses-St.-Germain but now the 
Eue de I'Ancienne Comedie — and opposite each 
other, seems to lend support to that theory. But to 
limit Procope's ambition in that way is to give him 
little credit as a man of business, for he probably 
knew that the histrionic fraternity was then, as now, 
usually short of funds. 

^ And yet it was the fate of the Cafe Procope to 
become associated in a notable manner with the his- 
tory of the French stage in the eighteenth century. 
If the actors of the Comedie-Frangaise did not bulk 
largely among the patrons of the house, the drama- 
tists did. There was Voltaire, for example, whose 
anxiety to know what the theatre-goers thought of 
his " Semiramis " enriched the Cafe Procope with 
one of its most picturesque memories. That trag- 
edy, a futile effort to compete with Crebillon pere, 
who had been spurred to rivalry by the notorious 
Madame de Pompadour, was produced at the Come- 
die-Frangaise in 1748 and much debated in the cafe 
across the street. 
Hence the following pen-portrait of the dramatist 



106 Old Paris 

by the hand of a friend. ^' M. de Voltaire, who al- 
ways loved to correct his works, and perfect them, 
became desirous to learn, more especially and at 
first hand, what good or ill the public were saying 
of his Tragedy; and it appeared to him that he 
could nowhere learn it better than in the Cafe de 
Procope, which was also called the Autre (Cavern) 
de Procope, because it was very dark even in full 
day, and ill-lighted in the evenings; and because 
you often saw there a set of lank, sallow poets, who 
had somewhat the air of apparitions. In this 
cafe, which fronts the Comedie-Fran§aise, had been 
held, for more than sixty years, the tribunal of those 
self-called Aristarchs, who fancied they could pass 
sentence without appeal, on plays, authors and ac- 
tors. M. de Voltaire wished to compear there, but 
in disguise and altogether incognito. It was on 
coming out from the playhouse that the judges 
usually proceeded thither, to open what they called 
their great sessions. On the second night of 
' Semiramis ' he borrowed a clergyman's clothes; 
dressed himself in cassock and long cloak; black 
stockings, girdle, bands, breviary itself; nothing 
was forgotten. He clapped on a large peruke, un- 
powdered, very ill combed, which covered more than 
half of his cheeks, and left nothing to be seen but 
the end of a long nose. The peruke was surmounted 
by a large three-cornered hat, corners half 
bruised-in. In this equipment, then, the author of 



Cafes of the Left Bank 107 

* Semiramis ' proceeded on foot to the Cafe de Pro- 
cope, where he squatted himself in a corner; and 
waiting for the end of the play, called for a hava- 
roise, a small roll of bread, and the Gazette. It was 
not long till those familiars of the Parterre and 
tenants of the cafe stept in. They instantly began 
discussing the new Tragedy. Its partisans and its 
adversaries pleaded their cause with warmth; each 
giving his reasons. Impartial persons also spoke 
their sentiments; and repeated some fine verses of 
the piece. During all this time, M. de Voltaire, with 
spectacles on nose, head stooping over the Gazette 
which he pretended to be reading, was listening to 
the debate; profiting by reasonable observations, 
suffering much to hear very absurd ones and not 
answer them, which irritated him. Thus, during 
an hour and a half, had he the courage and patience 
to hear ' Semiramis ' talked of and babbled of, with- 
out speaking a word. At last, all these pretended 
judges of the fame of authors having gone their 
ways, without converting one another, M. de Vol- 
taire also went off; took a coach in the Rue Maza- 
rine, and returned home about eleven o'clock. 
Though I knew of his disguise, I confess I was 
struck and almost frightened to see him accoutred 
so. I took him for a spectre, or shade of Ninus, 
that was appearing to me; or, at least, for one of 
those ancient Irish debaters, arrived at the end of 
their career, after wearing themselves out in school- 



108 Old Paris 

syllogisms. I helped him to doff all that apparatus, 
which I carried next morning to its true owner — a 
Doctor of the Sorbonne." 

Even if the critics did not penetrate Voltaire's 
disguise on that eavesdropping occasion, he was 
probably recognized by some of the attendants. 
For he was a constant patron of the cafe, and until 
the time, not so many years ago, when it closed its 
doors, Voltaire's table and chair were preserved as 
the most precious relics of the establishment. Even 
on the occasion of his last triumphant visit to Paris, 
when the Academy and society and the populace 
vied with each other in doing him honour, and when 
at a performance of his latest play, " Irene," he 
was crowned with laurel in his box in the theatre, 
he did not forget the haunt of his earlier years but 
included the Cafe Procope in his round of Saturnian 
visits. 

Rousseau, too, had his memories of the Procope — 
memories of success and failure. Undaunted by the 
adverse verdict of the Academy on his new plan of 
musical notation, he continued his labours until 
finally they had result in the operetta, '' Devin du 
Village," which, after the surmounting of many 
obstacles, was at length produced in Paris and re- 
ceived with unusual enthusiasm. The echoes of 
that success were heard in the Cafe Procope, 
for the author was escorted thither in triumph 
by Concordet, who bore him on his shoulders 



Cafes of the Left Bank 109 

round the cafe as he shouted, " Long live French 
music! " 

But a night or two later Eousseau had a quite 
different experience. In his earlier years he had 
written a comedy entitled " Narcisse," the secret 
of which he imparted to a comedian friend. Im- 
pressed by the success of the operetta, then being 
performed at the Opera House, this comedian ar- 
ranged for the production of " Narcisse " anony- 
mously at the Comedie-Fran§aise. It survived for 
two performances only on that occasion, but Eous- 
seau was so bored with the first that he had to leave 
the theatre before the last act. Crossing over to the 
Cafe Procope he found there several of his friends 
who had been as wearied with the comedy as the 
unknown author. Rousseau, however, was in a peni- 
tent and even generous mood. Although the secret 
of the authorship had been well kept he felt he 
could not keep it himself. So he rose in the cafe 
and announced, " The new piece has fallen flat, and 
it deserved to fall flat ; it wearied me to death. It 
is by Eousseau of Geneva, and I am that very Rous- 
seau." It is characteristic of the man that in pla- 
cing this incident on record he observed that his 
public confession was " much admired " and caused 
him little pain. It was doubtless sufficient for the 
moment that his action had restored him to the 
good graces of the patrons of the cafe. 

Beaumarchais, however, could look back upon his 



110 Old Paris 

great night at the Cafe Procope with unalloyed sat- 
isfaction. It was long delayed, it is true, but when 
it came it proved worth waiting for. 

Having, in 1778, completed a comedy under the 
title of " The Marriage of Figaro," Beaumarchais 
discovered once more that it was one thing to write 
a play and quite another to secure permission for 
its production on the stage. Perhaps, remembering 
his experience with " The Barber of Seville," he 
may have anticipated a wait of a couple of years 
before " The Marriage of Figaro " could be per- 
formed. But he had to be patient for a longer 
period than that. It was not until three years after 
it had been written that it was accepted by the 
Comedie-Frangaise, the actors of which were then 
so enthusiastic over their parts that the author at 
once requested the chief of police to appoint a cen- 
sor without delay. But the censor's report was un- 
favourable; the comedy was pronounced " detest- 
able." The fact was that Louis XVI, who has 
rarely been credited with any mental discernment, 
at once perceived the danger of the comedy, in that 
anticipating the verdict of Napoleon, who saw in it 
the ' ' Revolution already in action. ' ' So three more 
years had to pass ere, by intrigue, Beaumarchais 
at length obtained the necessary permission for the 
public performance of his comedy. 

In the interval the piece had become well known 
in social circles. The censor seems to have allowed 




DENIS DIDEROT. 



Cafes of the Left Bank 111 

copies to be made from the manuscript in his pos- 
session, and the author himself read the play in 
many salons. Paris, then, was keyed to a pitch of 
abnormal excitement as the day for the performance 
drew near, and the author, confident of the triumph 
in store for his comedy, entertained a large party 
of his friends at the Cafe Procope a few hours be- 
fore that performance took place. As the Cafe 
Procope was opposite the Comedie-Fran§aise, Beau- 
marchais commanded an excellent view of the dense 
crowds waiting outside the theatre, a sight to flatter 
even his vanity and contribute to the success of his 
dinner party. 

Although Beaumarchais is not thought to have 
realized the revolutionary tendency of his famous 
comedy, or to have foreseeen that his travesty of 
the society of his day tended to the destruction of 
that society, another patron of the Cafe Procope, 
Diderot to wit, had a clear notion of the mark at 
which he aimed. And in the history of the cafe it 
is recorded that his special delight was to sit in his 
favourite corner and emit startling paradoxes for 
the exclusive horrification of that agent of the chief 
of the police who frequented the resort in the hope 
of gleaning information which by faithful report- 
ing might conduce to his own promotion. His supe- 
rior, however, had a sense of humour and took Dide- 
rot less seriously. Hence when his agent reported 
that Diderot had the previous night declared in the 



112 Old Paris 

Cafe Proeope that one could not see a soul, the un- 
dismayed chief ejaculated, " M. Diderot se trompe. 
L'dme est esprit, et M. Diderot est plein d' esprit." 
A rejoinder which seems to show that at that time 
the liquors served at the Cafe Proeope included 
something stronger than coffee. 

Notwithstanding these literary and theatrical as- 
sociations, as soon as the French Kevolution broke 
out the Cafe Proeope seems to have attracted pa- 
trons of a different character. From about 1790 on- 
ward the most conspicuous among its clients were 
the men who figured most prominently in that terri- 
ble upheaval. Here, then, drinking coffee or 
stronger beverages, or playing chess, or reading the 
newspapers, or engaging in animated debate, might 
have been seen Marat, with his large bony face, flat 
nose, thin lips, grayish-yellow eyes, livid complex- 
ion, black beard and brown hair ; and Eobespierre, 
with his projecting brow, his blue and deeply-set 
eyes, his long lips, his profuse chestnut hair; and 
Danton, with his pock-marked face, terrible in its 
ugliness, and his piercing eyes; and Camille Des- 
moulins, bilious of visage, but smiling as though 
every victory were already won, Hebert, too, was 
not unknown at the Cafe Proeope, where, one ex- 
cited night, he seized upon Voltaire's marble table 
and, planting it before the door of the cafe, mounted 
it as a platform from whence to harangue the pass- 
ing crowd. And a greater than any of these came 



Cafes of the Left Bank 113 

to the cafe now and then, none other, in fact, than 
a young man of taciturn visage named Napoleon 
Bonaparte. Once, so the legend goes, he came 
hither without his purse and was obliged to leave 
his hat in pledge until he could return and pay his 
reckoning. 

In more recent days there was a time when it 
seemed as though the literary glories of the Cafe 
Procope might be revived. For it became a favour- 
ite haunt with Paul Verlaine, who preempted Vol- 
taire's table and seat and held his court in the tiny 
saloon at the rear of the cafe. The poet of deca- 
dence had many followers, and his advent at the 
Procope meant a large addition to the customers 
of the hour, but unhappily their purses were as ill- 
equipped as that of their master, and their patron- 
age did not contribute greatly to the coffers of the 
cafe. And when Verlaine died even that scanty 
revenue vanished, and no new poet took his place. 
That was the last flicker of the famous cafe. After 
a glorious career of more than two and a half cen- 
turies, it fell a victim to those forces of neglect and 
iconoclasm which have wrought such destruction 
among the haunts of old Paris. 

Notwithstanding its associations with many men 
of letters, the Cafe Procope, prior to the time when 
it became the haunt of Verlaine, makes no great fig- 
ure in Bohemian history; indeed, despite the asser- 
tions of Henry Murger, the Bohemian memories of 



114 Old Paris 

Parisian cafes practically date from the time when 
that lively historian of the Latin Quarter was driven 
by poverty to make his daily experience the theme 
of his daily feuilleton. In the end Murger had on 
his hands a book which meant fortune for himself 
and fame for Bohemianism. 

But, owing, no doubt, to the title under which that 
book is presented in its English translation, it is 
usually overlooked that the cafe which figures most 
conspicuously in Murger 's pages is not situated in 
the Latin Quarter. It is true that the Cafe Momus 
stood quite close to the banks of the Seine, but it 
was on the right and not on the left bank of the 
river. Hence its history must be reserved for the 
following chapter. At the same time it must not 
be forgotten that, according to the testimony of 
Alexandre Schanne, who was a member of the fa- 
mous Bohemian band, Murger and his friends did 
not confine their dubious patronage to the Cafe 
Momus but were also in the habit of frequenting the 
Cafe Rotonde, which, as it was situated at a corner 
of the Rue Hautefeuille and the Rue de I'Ecole de 
Medecine, belongs undoubtedly to the left-bank his- 
tory of Bohemianism. 

Without attempting to rival his friend in lively 
dialogue or incident, Schanne has left a picture of 
the nightly scene at the Rotonde which shows by its 
literalism that Murger 's chapters were not over- 
drawn. ' ' Every evening, ' ' says Schanne, ' ' the first 



Cafes of the Left Bank 115 

comer, at the waiter's inquiry, ' What will you take, 
sir ? ' never failed to reply, ' Nothing just at present, 
I am waiting for a friend.' The friend arrived, to 
be assailed by the brutal question, ' Have you any 
money? ' He would make a despairing jesture in 
the negative, and then added, loud enough to be 
heard by the dame du comptoir, ' By Jove, no, only 
fancy, I left my purse on my console-table, with gilt 
feet, in the purest Louis XV style. Ah! what a 
thing it is to be forgetful.' He would sit down, and 
the waiter would wipe the table as if he had some- 
thing to do. A third would come who was sometimes 
able to reply, ' Yes, I have ten sous.' ' Good,' we 
would reply, ' order a cup of coffee, a glass and a 
water-bottle; pay and give two sous to the waiter 
to secure his silence.' This would be done. Others 
would come and take their places beside us, repeat- 
ing to the waiter the same chorus, ' We are with 
this gentleman.' Frequently we would be eight or 
nine sitting at the same table, and only one cus- 
tomer. Whilst smoking and reading the papers we 
would, however, pass the glass and bottle. When 
the water began to run short, as on a ship in dis- 
tress, one of us would have the impudence to call 
out, ' Waiter, some water.' The master of the es- 
tablishment, who understood our situation, had no 
doubt given orders for us to be left alone, and made 
his fortune without our help. He was a good fellow 
and an intelligent one, having subscribed to all the 



116 Old Paris 

scientific periodicals of Europe, whieh brought him 
the custom of foreign students." 

How different that picture from the one drawn 
by the popular novelist who dishes up the Bohemian- 
ism of the Latin Quarter in the hope of repeating 
Murger 's success ! Most of the students of the P. N. 
appear to be flush of money; the marble-top tables 
of his cafe are slobbed with beer; the noisy cus- 
tomers pelt each other with handfuls of billiard 
chalk or cafe spoons; the air is laden with orders 
for bocks ; and the only thing that seems to trouble 
those heroes is, not poverty but an inability to get 
their pictures hung in the Salon or their articles 
published in the newspapers. With Murger, Bohe- 
mianism was a stage in artistic life; with his imi- 
tators it is a blend of free drinking and free 
love. 

Although the haunts of Murger 's grisettes on 
both sides the Seine have long disappeared, there 
survived until quite recently, in the Vachette, a cafe 
which worthily perpetuated the best traditions of 
old Paris. It was one of the oldest of the club- 
cafes of the Quarter. And, as with the Rotonde and 
the Momus, its atmosphere combined gaiety and 
gravity to an unusual degree. There are cafes in 
the Quarter wholly given over to the most degrad- 
ing type of Bohemianism; the Vachette traditions 
leaned more to scholarship than sensuality. Not 
that the spirit of the place was entirely severe ; re- 




HENRY MURGER. 



Cafes of the Left Bank 117 

spectable would fit the case more closely. On par- 
donable occasions, such as carnival time and Christ- 
mas and New Year celebrations, the Vachette was 
as gay as the rest, yet even on those privileged 
days it was not uncommon to hear metaphysical 
jokes and puns in Greek. Hence when a young pro- 
fessor of philosophy unbent to the extent of enter- 
taining his pupils he would elect the Cafe Vachette 
as a matter of course, while elderly instructors 
might keep late hours under its roof without having 
their virtue suspected. 

But as Verlaine's death sounded the knell of the 
Cafe Procope, it would seem as though the demise 
a year ago of Jean Moreas had something to do 
with the passing of the Vachette. That Athens-born 
but wholly Parisianized poet, a grandson of one of 
Byron's heroes of Missolonghi, had for many years 
made the Vachette his headquarters, and was nightly 
from nine to two the centre of a large band of dis- 
ciples. In the early years of his patronage his 
talk was compact of symbolism, which no one de- 
fended more vigorously from the charge of being 
' ' decadent ; ' ' but for some time preceding his death 
he was just as pronounced in decrying the license 
claimed by the symbolists. All that, however, made 
no difference to his following at the Vachette, for 
to the last his advent, somewhere about the hour of 
nine, always meant a large accession of customers. 
But no one succeeded to his leadership; his disci- 



118 Old Paris 

pies dispersed; and the Vachette has definitely 
joined the history of old Paris. 

Oblivion, too, and that twice-told, has also over- 
taken another left-bank haunt of literary men. Not 
only has the Magny restaurant been pulled down 
and rebuilt in a style having no likeness to its pre- 
decessor, but the name of the street in which it was 
situated has been changed from the Rue Contre- 
scarpe to the Rue Mazet. 

Happily, however, thanks to the copious " Jour- 
nal " of the Goncourt brothers, there is no danger 
of oblivion overtaking the famous dinners held at 
the Magny. Those friendly and literary festivals 
seem to have been founded by Garvarni, otherwise 
the famous caricaturist Sulpice G. Chevalier, and 
Charles A. Sainte-Beuve, the most illustrious critic 
of the nineteenth century. How it came to pass that 
they selected the Magny for the scene of their re- 
unions seems mysterious in view of the modest repu- 
tation of that establishment, where, in the forties, 
the most elaborate dinner did not involve an expend- 
iture of more than three francs. Perhaps the qual- 
ity of the table had improved by 1862, when the din- 
ners were begun, or it may be that the remoteness 
and quietness of the restaurant were the chief fac- 
tors. 

In many respects the Magny dinners are compa- 
rable in the history of French literature with the 
meetings of that Club which was the focus of the 



Cafes of the Left Bank 119 

genius of London in the eighteenth century. The 
membership was select from the start and was kept 
select to the end. All told, and when most numer- 
ous, the band included fourteen men of letters, the 
two founders and the following: Charles Edmond, 
Paul de Saint- Victor, Turgueniev, Taine, Baudry, 
E. Soulie, Edmond de Groncourt, Jules de Goncourt, 
Renan, Dr. Veyne, De Chennevieres, M. Comte de 
Meuwerkerke, and Theophile Gautier. Although dis- 
tinguished men were often present as visitors, ac- 
tual election to the fellowship was made a matter 
of serious discussion and formal voting. And when 
a candidate was elected, he was informed of the fact 
in a style akin to the ceremonious initiation adopted 
by The Club in London. Thus, Jules de Goncourt, 
in announcing to Gautier his admission to the circle 
wrote that he had '' the honour " of informing him 
of his unanimous election, and gave the day and 
hour for his formal installation. 

At first the dinners were held on Saturdays every 
fortnight, but later the day of meeting was changed 
to Monday. As the total membership was so near 
the unlucky number it was not unusual for the su- 
perstitious to be rendered uneasy. Thus one eve- 
ning. Saint- Victor, in the midst of an eloquent eu- 
logy of a friend, paused to exclaim that there were 
thirteen at the table. " Bah! " retorted Gautier, 
" only Christians count, and there are several athe- 
ists present! " But Gautier himself was sufficiently 



120 Old Paris 

alarmed to agree that the restaurant-keeper's son 
be sent for to break the spell. 

Although in the main pleasant enough gatherings, 
a reminiscence of one dinner by Jules de Goncourt 
is sufficient evidence that the pleasure was not that 
of stagnation. " After a violent discussion at 
Magny's," he wrote, " from which I have just 
emerged with beating heart and parched throat, I 
am fully convinced of the following: All political 
discussion comes to this, ' I am worth more than you 
are! ' All literary discussion, ' I possess better 
taste than you! ' All artistic discussion, ' I see 
more clearly than you do ! ' All musical discussion, 
' I am gifted with a better ear than you can boast 
of ! ' It is rather alarming, nevertheless, to see how 
isolated we are in all controversy, and how few 
proselytes we make." 

Doubtless Sainte-Beuve was the chief cause of the 
heated debates at the Magny dinners. It is true he 
often enlivened the proceedings with new anecdotes, 
drawing liberally on his great stores of reminis- 
cence, but for the most part he argued for the sake 
of arguing and would defend or attack the same 
author according as he was criticized or eulogized. 
One of his stories related to an episode of the early 
career of Robespierre. He knew at Boulogne an 
old librarian named Isnard, who had been professor 
of rhetoric in the Oratorian school at Arras. Robes- 
pierre had been his pupil, and he used to tell how 



Cafes of the Left Bank 121 

the latter, having become a briefless barrister, and 
time hanging heavy on his hands, had taken to wri- 
ting poetry. His first literary effort had for its 
theme " The Art of Spitting and Blowing One's 
Nose; " but Eobespierre's sister, fearing lest the 
publication of this poem should lose him what small 
practice he had, sought out Isnard, and consulted 
him as to how its publication might be delayed. Ac- 
cordingly, Isnard asked Robespierre to read him the 
poem, and observed, *' Good, very good indeed, but 
you must polish, you must polish." And while the 
polishing was in progress, the Eevolution happened 
and turned the poet to other occupations. 

But Sainte-Beuve was not always in this reminis- 
cent mood. Thus, when at one dinner the name of 
Victor Hugo was suddenly mentioned, Sainte-Beuve 
'* started as if he had been bitten by some animal 
under the table, and declared that Hugo is a charla- 
tan, the first man who speculated in literature. 
Whereupon Flaubert observed that he is the only 
man in whose skin he would gladly find himself. 
' No, no,' answered Sainte-Beuve, justly enough, 
' one would never wish to give up one's own person- 
ality.' " And then, as was often his manner, he 
seemed to relent his strong words, and admitted 
that it was Hugo who first taught him verse, besides 
instructing him in painting. ' ' He has a marvellous 
temperament," he added. " His barber once told 
me that the hair of his head was three times as 



122 Old Paris 

strong as that of any other man, and blunted all the 
razors. He has the teeth of a wolf, teeth which could 
crush peach stones. And what eyes! " And so 
peace would reign once more. 

To be broken as violently, perhaps, at the next 
dinner. But that time it was the turn of Balzac. 
He admitted him to be a great man of genius, but 
affirmed that he was not true to life. And then the 
talk around the dinner-table waxed furious, leading 
at length to a depreciation of Homer by Edmond de 
Goncourt. *' Your Homer," he said, " only de- 
scribes physical sufferings ; it is much more difficult 
to depict those that are moral. I tell you frankly 
that the poorest psychological novel is of greater 
interest to me than all your Homer put together." 
This was rank treason to Saint- Victor. With eyes 
blazing he declared that such nonsense inclined him 
to fling himself out of the window ; ' ' you are quite 
crazy, ' ' he shouted, stamping his foot ; ' ' the Greeks 
are beyond discussion." But even that storm, so 
remindful of that Homeric conflict described by 
Montesquieu two centuries earlier, abated at last; 
Saint- Victor shook hands with his opponent, and the 
dinner was resumed. 

One tempestuous dinner at the Magny, however, 
had a less peaceful issue. It was in the days of the 
Franco-German war, and something prompted 
Eenan to proffer a eulogy of the enemies of France. 
When studying any question, he said, he had always 




RESTAURANT TOURELLE. 



Cafes of the Left Bank 123 

been struck '' by the superiority of German work 
and German intellect. It is not astonishing that they 
should have attained such proficiency in the art of 
war, for their efficiency has been displayed in other 
ways. Yes ! gentlemen, the Germans are a superior 
race." The table was in an uproar in a moment; 
and when, some years later, Jules de Goncourt pub- 
lished the notes he had made of the discussion, 
the trouble was renewed, for Renan stoutly de- 
nied having used the words attributed to him 
and henceforward reckoned the diarist as an 
enemy. 

That, however, is the only unpleasant memory 
associated with the Magny dinners. Heated as were 
the discussions, they all ended in friendliness, and 
have given the restaurant an enviable chapter in 
the literary annals of Paris. 

Notwithstanding the disappearance of such fa- 
mous resorts as the Procope, the Vachette, the 
Magny and the Rotonde, it must not be forgotten 
that there still remain on the left bank of the river 
some cafes and restaurants which appeal to the lover 
of historic associations or the epicure. There is the 
Cafe Foyot, for example, much affected by patrons 
of the Odeon for after-theatre suppers, which pre- 
serves its old-time aspect and is innocent of white 
and gold, the electric lamps and orchestra that are 
thought to be indispensable in up-to-date establish- 
ments of that class. Nor are the patrons of the 



124 Old Paris 

Foyot restricted to playgoers; many noted artists 
and men of letters are numbered among its 
clients. 

And the Latin Quarter can yet boast not a few 
of those students' cafes such as that in which 
George Moore met his Irish waitress — cafes, as he 
observed, furnished with tapestries and oak tables, 
and old-time jugs and Medicis gowns, and where a 
student occasionally catches up a tall bock in his 
teeth, drains it at a gulp, and, after turning head 
over heels, walks out without having smiled. Few 
of these cafes, however, have any remarkable asso- 
ciations; their interest consists chiefly in their dif- 
ference from the cafes over the river. 

But there is one establishment which can claim a 
history that makes even the Cafe Procope seem a 
place of yesterday. More than a century before the 
house opposite the Comedie-FranQaise opened its 
doors there had been established by the side of the 
Seine an eating-house to which had been given the 
picturesque title of the Tour d 'Argent. The tradi- 
tions of the Silver Tower record that shortly after 
it was opened in 1582 it speedily won the favour of 
Parisians as the most fashionable restaurant of the 
city, and despite the movement which has trans- 
ferred to the right bank of the Seine most of the 
notable resorts of gourmands, the Silver Tower still 
maintains its high reputation as the Mecca of good 
cooking. 



Cafes of the Left Bank 125 

Although the present home of the Silver Tower 
dates only from the time of Louis Philippe, at which 
period the Quai de la Tournelle, on which it stands, 
was constructed, it occupies the same site as the 
ancient building of which it is the comparatively 
modern successor. Not that it is particularly mod- 
ern in its appearance. On the contrary, it is wholly 
free from the garishness of paint and gilding so 
much in evidence among other Parisian restaurants, 
and there is little more than a bunch of fruit in its 
old-fashioned window to indicate the nature of the 
establishment. Half-way up the fa§ade, however, 
hangs the artistic sign of the house, reminiscent of 
the beautiful signs of the sixteenth century, and 
displaying the proud date of 1582 above its tower 
of silver. 

Could Apicius visit Paris it is to the Silver 
Tower he would first bend his steps. For from its 
earliest days to its most recent it has been the pride 
of this house to sustain the repute of French cook- 
ing. If its associations are not professedly literary, 
it can yet boast that countless famous men have sat 
at its tables, including Napoleon, Edward VII, and 
many others who regarded the sustenance of the 
body as something more than a satisfaction of hun- 
ger. For many years the culinary mysteries of the 
Tour d 'Argent were presided over by the illustrious 
Frederic to whom has been awarded the high praise 
of being the " most famous maitre d 'hotel Paris has 



126 Old Paris 

ever known." His praises were sung in many 
stanzas by the Marquis Lauzieres de Themines: 

" Uan quinze cent quatre-vingt-deux rapelle: 
Qu'en plein Paris un homme intelligent 
Inaugurait au quai de la Tournelle 
Un restaurant dit de la Tour d* Argent. 
Qui le fonda, ne le dit pas Vhistoire. 
Mais de nos jours (c'est connu du public), 
Celui qui Va s'en fait honneur et gloire, 
Le createur des mets est Frederic." 

As that sample shows, the poet was indifferent 
to the name of the founder of the Silver Tower; it 
was sufficient for him to sing its glory in the person 
of its wonderful chef. And now that Frederic is 
no more, and the restaurant has a new owner in the 
person of Andre Terrail, there is to be no falling 
off in that catering for the epicure for which the 
house has been famous for so many generations. 
The ducks will still be numbered as in the old days, 
trout and crayfish will continue to swim about in 
their tanks all alive until an order from a customer 
signs their death-warrant, and although some of the 
rooms, and notably that in which Napoleon dined, 
are to be refurnished, everything will be carried out 
in the best Empire style. Thus for many years to 
come the Silver Tower will preserve the old tradi- 
tions of Paris on the left bank of the Seine. 



CHAPTER V 

CAFES OF THE EIGHT BANK 

Peehaps the most conclusive proof of the rapidity 
with which the coffee-house attained popularity in 
old Paris on both sides of the Seine is provided by 
the fact that only five years after the opening of 
the Cafe Procope the new type of public resort was 
seized upon as a theme for stage use. 

On an August night, then, in 1694, the patrons of 
the Comedie-Frangaise, after a performance of the 
'^ Cid," had submitted to their suffrages a one-act 
comedy entitled, ^' Le Cafe." It was the work of 
Jean Baptiste Rousseau, the son of an industrious 
shoemaker, who by parental indulgence was af- 
forded the means and the liberty to pose as a man 
about town. No doubt the worthy shoemaker made 
one of the audience in the Comedie-FrauQaise on that 
notable night, full of fatherly pride in the author. 
The reception of '' Le Cafe," however, was not 
cordial. Rousseau was not equal to his opportunity, 
and his attempt to hit off the characteristics of the 
frequenters of the new resorts resolved itself into 
a mere catalogue unrelieved by plot or dialogue. 
Three years later Rousseau tried again with a five- 
act comedy, * ' Le Flatteur, ' ' and this time captured 

127 



128 Old Paris 

the favour of his audience. His shoemaker father 
was in the theatre, and when the play was over made 
his way to the green room, where his son was sur- 
rounded by a crowd of dandified admirers. But his 
congratulations and claim of parenthood jarred 
upon Jean Baptiste in the moment of his triumph. 
'' He my father," he said to a companion in a sneer- 
ing tone, '' the fellow must be mad! " 

That incident is sufficient to explain the man. 
That he who could renounce the author of his being 
should also be capable of lampooning his closest 
friends might be expected. But that fatal defect of 
character wrought its own Nemesis. Eousseau was 
in the habit of frequenting the Cafe Laurent, a fa- 
vourite rendezvous of the literary men of the early 
eighteenth century, and there he put in circulation, 
in an anonymous way, many snatches of verse full 
of bitter satire of his companions. He was, however, 
suspected of the authorship, and after a lively quar- 
rel was turned out of the cafe. Even that did not 
cure him of his ill-nature, but when, several years 
later, he perpetrated another satire more offensive 
than his cafe libels he was brought to trial and ban- 
ished from the country. 

Another early memory of the cafes of the right 
bank of the Seine recalls the personality of an Eng- 
lish peer who was in many respects the counterpart 
of the French poet. ' ' Wanting nothing but an hon- 
est heart," was Pope's verdict on Philip, Duke of 



Cafes of the Right Bank 129 

Wharton, who haunted the cafes of Paris in 1716. 
At Lyons, whither he had been sent with a tutor, he 
picked up a bear's cub, and when he determined to 
abscond from that city he donated his pet to his 
mentor with the following note : ' ' Being no longer 
able to bear your ill usage, I think proper to be 
gone from you; however, that you may not want 
company, I have left you the bear, as the most suit- 
able companion in the world that could be picked 
for you." 

As soon as he arrived in Paris Lord Wharton be- 
gan to frequent the English Cafe and indulge his 
passion for gambling. And he was as free with his 
tongue as with his money. As those were the days 
when the Old Pretender was keeping his exiled court 
at St. Grermains there were plenty of Jacobites in 
Paris, and the eccentric Wharton took a keen de- 
light in this day posing as one of the band and the 
next as a Whig, In his Whiggish moods he in- 
formed his Jacobite companions that he was to be 
appointed ' ' Lord of the Bedchamber to the Devil, ' ' 
and when they solemnly rebuked him and informed 
him that they must deprive themselves of his com- 
pany if he continued using such " disrespectful " 
language, he promised to be very cautious in future 
and to frequent the Dutch Cafe instead of the Eng- 
lish. The next night, however, he appeared at the 
English Cafe as usual, but behaved himself ' ' as vio- 
lent a Jacobite as any one in Paris," The record 



130 Old Paris 

of Wharton's exploits, which is to be found only in 
some private letters of the period, is of interest as 
showing that the cafes soon caught the hostelry- 
habit of catering for different nationalities. 

But the native Parisian was not overlooked. On 
the right bank of the Seine as well as on the left 
there were soon established numerous cafes in which 
any one save a Frenchman would have been some- 
what ill at ease. And to this day there is no region 
where cluster more thickly the memories of historic 
cafes than the Palais Royal. 

Singular indeed has been the story of that blend 
of palace and public garden and arcade known as 
the Palais Royal. The main building, erected by 
Richelieu in 1636 and known as the Palais Cardinal 
until 1643, when it became a royal possession under 
Richelieu's will, has known many names and uses 
until to-day it is occupied by the Conseil d'Etat. 
The three galleries which surround the garden, and 
in which so many cafes were to find a home, were 
constructed by the infamous Philippe Egalite as a 
means of increasing his revenue. The long lines of 
shops and cafes in those galleries brought in a hand- 
some income and were the means of transforming 
the Palais Royal into the fashionable centre of 
Paris. 

Even prior to those days the garden of the Palais 
Royal was a favourite promenade and haunt of the 
debauchee and could boast of at least one famous 



Cafes of the Right Bank 131 

cafe. Diderot in his " Eameau's Nephew " has left 
a vivid picture of the resort as it was about the year 
1760. '' In all weathers, wet or fine, it is my prac- 
tice to go, towards five o'clock in the evening, to 
take a turn in the Palais Royal. I am he whom you 
may see any afternoon sitting by myself and musing 
in D'Argenson's seat. I keep up talk with myself 
about politics, love, taste, or philosophy; I leave 
my mind to play the libertine unchecked, and it is 
welcome to run after the first idea that offers, sage 
or gay, just as you see our young beaux in the Foy 
passage following the steps of some gay nymph, 
with her saucy mien, face all smiles, eyes all fire, 
and nose a trifle turned up; then quitting her for 
another, attacking them all, but attaching them- 
selves to none. My thoughts — these are the wan- 
tons for me. If the weather is too cold or too wet, 
I take shelter in the Regency coffee-house. There 
I amuse myself by looking on while they play chess. 
Nowhere in the world do they play chess as skilfully 
as in Paris, and nowhere in Paris as they do at this 
coffee-house; 'tis here you see Legal the profound, 
Philidor the subtle, Mayot the solid; here you see 
the most astounding moves, and listen to the sorriest 
talk, for if a man be at once a wit and a great chess- 
player, like Legal, you may also be a great chess- 
player and a sad simpleton, like Joubert and 
Mayot." 

Macaulay was doubtless familiar with that pas- 



132 Old Paris 

sage ; at any rate, when, seventy years later, lie was 
on the eve of a visit to Paris, he informed a friend 
that of the two things there he was most impatient 
to see one was the Palais Royal. Nor was he disap- 
pointed. " As a great capital," he wrote, " is a 
country in miniature, so the Palais Rpyal is a cap- 
ital in miniature — an abstract and epitome of a 
vast community, exhibiting at a glance the politeness 
which adorns its higher ranks, the coarseness of its 
populace, and the vices and the misery which lie 
underneath its brilliant exterior. Everything is 
there, and everybody. Statesmen, wits, philoso- 
phers, beauties, dandies, adventurers, artists, idlers, 
the king and his court, beggars with matches crying 
for charity, wretched creatures dying of disease and 
want in garrets." At the time of Macaulay's visit 
the famous cafes of the Palais Royal were at the 
height of their prosperity, the oldest of all, the Cafe 
de la Regence, being still where it was in the days of 
Diderot. 

Indeed among the cafes still existing in Paris none 
can boast so long a history as the Regency. So 
long ago as 1688, so the legend runs, an enterprising 
Parisian named Lefevre began selling cups of coffee 
in the square of the Palais Royal, but whether from 
a portable urn such as figures in Bouchardon's 
sketch of the street vendor who cried " Cafe! 
Cafe! " or from a stall, is not clear. In the end, 
however, he must have secured a habitation of some 



Cafes of the Right Bank 133 

kind, for he built up a business which he eventually 
disposed of to one Leclerc, who, in 1718, christened 
his establishment the Cafe de la Eegence. That 
name was, of course, in honour of the Regent Or- 
leans, and the cafe has preserved the title to this 
day, an unusual example of stability in a city as 
changeable in its nomenclature as a weathercock. 

Apart from the proximity of the cafe to the pal- 
ace in which the Regent carried on his notorious 
orgies, the establishment had an invaluable asset in 
the person of the proprietor's wife, a woman of so 
many charms that the gallants of the day, not ex- 
cluding the Regent himself, presented her with a 
poem entitled '^ Patent of Venus for Madame Le- 
clerc, mistress of the Cafe de la Regence." So rav- 
ishing was '' le belle cafetiere " that the young Mar- 
quis Choiseul-Labaume was eloquent in her praises. 
But in his eulogies he did not sufficiently distinguish 
the things that differ. Hence, when, one day, he told 
his uncle, the Archbishop of Chalons, that he had 
seen a most exquisite cafetiere, that unworldly eccle- 
siastic, convinced that such a beautiful work of art 
could not be in more suitable hands than those of his 
nephew, at once presented the youth with twenty- 
five louis with which to purchase it. The story does 
not say whether Madame Leclerc regarded the sum 
as adequate. 

From its earliest days, however, and notwith- 
standing the salacious fame it acquired through be- 



134 Old Paris 

ing made the scene of a " love " episode in a typical 
Parisian play, the Eegency attracted other than 
gallants as its clients. Diderot spoke the trnth when 
he explained how he went thither to watch the chess- 
players. In the early years of his married life, when 
funds did not permit the purchase of coffee for use 
at home, his wife was wont to hand him a few pence 
that he might go to the Regency for a cup and watch 
the games. He has perpetuated the names of some 
of the most famous players, such as Philidor, the 
greatest theoretician of the eighteenth century and 
far better remembered for his chess than his music, 
but he was too early to record that Robespierre too 
was to be numbered among the celebrated chess- 
players of the cafe. A story is told of one of his 
evenings here which presents him in a more amiable 
light than most of his doings during the Reign of 
Terror. One evening a nervous-looking young man 
seated himself at Robespierre's table and requested 
the favour of a game. He consented, and when he 
had played and lost two games, he asked his partner 
what the stakes were. The victor replied that he 
wanted the pardon of a young man who had been 
condemned to death, and it then transpired that the 
stranger was a young girl who had donned mascu- 
line attire in the hope of saving the life of her fiance. 
Her ruse was successful, for Robespierre granted 
the pardon. 

Napoleon, too, is numbered among the famous 



Cafes of the Right Bank 135 

chess-players of the Regency. He frequented the 
cafe before he became Consul and after, and the table 
he used is still preserved among the relics of the 
establishment. Deschapelles, also, and Bourdon- 
nais, and many another illustrious exponent of the 
game, can be counted among the chess-players who 
figure in the history of the cafe. It still maintains 
its traditions in that respect, though players no 
longer have to pay for their tables by the hour, with 
an extra charge in the evening for the candles by 
the side of the board, as used to be the rule in the 
olden days. Nor are they likely to be so disturbed 
as when Gambetta used to hold forth here in a loud 
voice and at last made one absorbed player protest 
that his noise hindered him from understanding his 
chessmen. 

But in addition to its notable chess-players, the 
Regency can claim associations with a long line of 
illustrious men of letters. Le Sage, of '' Gil Bias " 
fame, though unusually domestic for a writer, fre- 
quented the cafe and has enshrined its name in one 
of his books, while Jean Jacques Rousseau at- 
tracted a great crowd of followers to the place when 
he frequented it after the publication of '' Emile." 
Voltaire, too, is numbered among its famous clients, 
and Beaumarchais, and Alfred de Musset, and Vic- 
tor Hugo, and Theophile Gautier, and Henry Mur- 
ger. The list might be greatly extended, until it 
became an outline history of French literature foir 



136 Old Paris 

more than two centuries. And it is notable that this 
varied patronage has continued to the present day, 
surviving the removal of the cafe from the Palais 
Royal to the Rue St. Honore, where, however, the 
rooms and decorations are redolent of eighteenth 
century traditions. 

But all the associations of the Regency are what 
Byron might have called " tame and domestic " 
compared with the memories suggested by several 
of its rivals in the Palais Royal. True, all the cafes 
were lively enough during the French Revolution. 
Even the bookshops in the galleries were busy then. 
Arthur Young, who was in Paris in the month pre- 
ceding the fateful July of 1789, described the pam- 
phlet vendors as doing a thriving trade ; every hour 
produced some new publication, and there were 
eager buyers all the time. ' ' But the coffee-houses, ' ' 
he added, ' ' present yet more singular and astonish- 
ing spectacles; they are not only crowded within, 
but other expectant crowds are at the doors and 
windows, listening a gorge deploye to certain ora- 
tors, who from chairs or tables harangue each his 
little audience: the eagerness with which they are 
heard, and the thunder of applause they receive for 
every sentiment of more than common hardiness or 
violence against the present government, cannot 
easily be imagined. ' ' 

These are general terms. Had the observant Mr. 
Young visited the Palais Royal a few Sundays later, 



Cafes of the Eight Bank 137 

on Sunday, July 12th, to be precise, he would have 
witnessed a scene which would have obliged him to 
be more particular. 

Paris was in a ferment on that day of rest. The 
States-General had met ; the contest had been waged 
between the notables and the clergy and the third 
estate as to whether they should vote separately or 
as one assembly ; foiled in their wish that the voting 
be taken in the mass, the elected representatives had 
formed themselves into the National Assembly and 
announced their determination not to separate until 
they had framed a new constitution for the country ; 
and Louis XVI, persuaded that Necker was the real 
cause of the upheaval, had taken the extreme step 
of dismissing the only minister who enjoyed the con- 
fidence of the people. The air, then, was full of 
bodeful rumours on that Sunday morning. And to 
add to the excitement, about nine o'clock the walls 
of Paris were suddenly plastered with huge placards 
in the name of the king, inviting the citizens to re- 
main quietly in their homes and not to be alarmed at 
the movements of troops through the city. The ref- 
erence to the military was not " bluff; " almost as 
soon as the placards appeared bodies of infantry 
and cavalry, with some pieces of artillery, entered 
Paris, while officers and aides-de-camp rode hither 
and thither through the streets. 

Heedless of the exhortation to remain quietly in 
their homes, the excited Parisians flocked in great 



138 Old Paris 

crowds to the chief places of public resort, and no- 
where was there a larger or more agitated gathering 
than in the Palais Royal. It was at this juncture 
that there issued from the Cafe Foy a young jour- 
nalist named Camille Desmoulins, one of those medi- 
ocre but vainglorious men who sprang into promi- 
nence so abundantly during the Revolution. Con- 
scious that his particular hour had come, Desmou- 
lins, his black eyes blazing with anger and his long 
black hair tossed about in the breeze, vaulted on to 
a table outside the cafe and began his eventful ap- 
peal to the passions of the mob. 

' ' Citizens ! " he cried, ' ' the moment for action 
has arrived. The dismissal of M. Necker is the sig- 
nal for a St. Bartholomew of the patriots. A hun- 
dred barrels of powder are placed under the Assem- 
bly to blow the deputies into the air. A hundred 
guns on Montmartre and Belleville are already 
pointed on Paris. Furnaces for red-hot shot are pre- 
paring in the Bastile. Men, women, and children 
will be massacred — none spared. This very eve- 
ning the Swiss and German troops will issue from 
the Champs de Mars to slaughter us. One resource 
alone is left to us," Desmoulins concluded, " which 
is to fly to arms ! ' ' 

And suiting the action to the word, he drew a 
couple of pistols from his bosom, repeating, " To 
arms ! iTo arms ! ' ' 

But to distinguish friend from foe, patriot from 




CAMILLE DESMOULINS OUTSIDE THE CAFE FOY. 



Cafes of the Right Bank 139 

aristocrat, a badge was necessary, some ribbon or 
cockade of an agreed colour. What should it bef 
' ' Let it be green, ' ' he shouted, ' ' green — the colour 
of hope ! " In a moment the trees of the Palais 
Eoyal were stripped of their verdant boughs, and 
the shops in the galleries plundered of every inch 
of ribbon of that hue. And then the turbulent mob, 
Desmoulins at its head, marched away from the 
Cafe Foy on its errand of Eevolution. 

In the quieter years of a later generation the Cafe 
Foy acquired a reputation for exclusiveness not 
quite in harmony with the part it played in being 
the starting point of the lawlessness of the Revolu- 
tion. Almost to the day when it closed its doors it 
was distinguished among the cafes of Paris as one 
of the few in which smoking was not allowed. Those 
were the days, too, when it was frequented by the 
artist Antoine Charles Vernet, whose ^' Morning of 
Austerlitz " was rewarded by Napoleon with the 
Legion of Honour. As, however, he survives in the 
history of art more by his cafe scenes than his 
cavalry charges, it is fitting he should be remem- 
bered in connection with the Cafe Foy by an inci- 
dent which led to his adorning the ceiling of that 
establishment. While dining there one day with a 
merry, wine-drinking crowd, the cork of a bottle of 
champagne got out of control and flew upward to 
the ceiling, where it left a disfiguring mark. Vernet 
called for a ladder and a brush and some paint, and 



140 Old Paris 

immediately transformed the ugly cork mark into 
a graceful swallow. Such a relic was, of course, 
carefully preserved to the last days of the cafe, kept 
fresh by that mysterious agency which seems to 
watch like a providence over anything there is 
profit in conserving. 

Several of the most famous cafes of the Palais 
Eoyal owed their existence directly to the French 
Eevolution. The chefs of the noble families, de- 
prived of their employment by the ruin of their 
masters, could not all find occupation in catering for 
wealthy '' patriots," and hence a considerable num- 
ber became the servants of the omnipotent crowd by 
opening cafes or restaurants. Chief among these 
were Very, Beauvilliers, and Fevrier, who, in 1790 
and 1791, purchased premises in one or other of the 
galleries of the Palais Eoyal and set up business 
there. The Very restaurant was the speculation of 
two brothers who paid nearly two thousand francs 
for their arcades, while Beauvilliers secured his 
three arcades for a much smaller figure. Fevrier, 
however, who professed great sympathy with the 
most violent of the " patriots," contented himself 
with a more modest establishment, his restaurant 
being nothing more than some low-vaulted cellars 
with simple tables and a minimum of illumination. 

Yet it was at Fevrier 's there took place one of 
the most dramatic incidents arising from the pro- 
tracted voting of the Convention which condemned 



Cafes of the Right Bank 141 

Louis XVI to death. " It was at five on the Satur- 
day evening," as Carlyle tells, " when Lepelletier 
St. Fargeau, having given his vote. No Delay, ran 
over to Fevrier's in the Palais Eoyal to snatch a 
morsel of dinner. He had dined, and was paying. 
A thickset man ' with black hair and blue beard,' 
in a loose kind of frock, stept up to him; it was, 
as Fevrier and bystanders bethought them, one 
Paris of the old King's Guard. * Are you Lepelle- 
tier? ' asks he. ' Yes.' ' You voted in the King's 
Business — ?' 'I voted Death.' ' Scelerat, take 
that! ' cries Paris, flashing out a sabre from under 
his frock, and plunging it deep in Lepelletier 's side. 
Fevrier clutches him: but he breaks off; is gone." 
Two other restaurants of the Palais Eoyal, 
Masse 's and Meot's, are conspicuous in the annals 
of the Eevolution. The former was a chosen resort 
of the royalists, whose dinners resulted in the publi- 
cation of numerous pamphlets devoted to the cause 
of the King. The latter, Meot's, was also a royalist 
haunt to a large extent, until the times grew too 
dangerous. Meot had a high reputation for the ex- 
cellence of his table and cellar; even when famine 
increased in Paris he was able to boast that he could 
give his clients a choice of twenty-two white and 
twenty-seven red wines, not to mention sixteen 
liqueurs. So enviable, indeed, was his reputation 
that such a pure '' patriot " as Desmoulins ex- 
claimed, " I am perfectly willing to celebrate the 



142 Old Paris 

Republic, provided the banquets are held at 
Meot's." 

One of the apartments at Meot 's was known as the 
*' Red Room," and Edmond Bire has sketched a 
convivial scene which took place there when the 
'' patriots " flooded the restaurant and indulged in 
the flesh-pots of the hated aristocrats. " One day 
Barere was dining with Vilate and Herault- 
Sechelles — the elegant Sechelles, who is also an 
adept at reconciling the severest principles with the 
most lax observance of morality. ' Nature,' said 
Herault, ' will be the goddess of the French, and the 
universe will be her temple. ' The conversation then 
turned upon the Revolutionary Government which 
there was some talk of establishing. Said Herault- 
Sechelles, with a sigh, * Was Raynal right, after all, 
in declaring that a nation can only be regenerated 
in a bath of blood 1 ' To this Barere replied : ' What 
is the present generation compared with the immen- 
sity of the centuries to come? ' And with these 
words they each poured themselves out a glass of 
that marvellous eau-de-vie which comes from the 
cellars of Chantilly, and which is sold at sixty francs 
per bottle. ' ' 

While the masters of the hour were able to in- 
dulge in what luxuries they fancied, other cafe fre- 
quenters, judging from the testimony of contem- 
porary letters, were required to take their own bread 
with them, and such invitations as they extended 



Cafes of the Right Bank 143 

to their friends were given only on the condition 
that they came so provided. Those contemporary 
documents are also of great interest for the light 
they throw on the doings of the young aristocrats 
during that stormy period. They were never wholly 
repressed by the popular demagogues, and when at 
length their power began to wane they took an 
aggressive attitude in such places as the Cafe Char- 
tres. Numbering between five and six hundred, they 
were distinguished for their semi-English attire, 
and when they had any particular plan to carry out 
they raided the streets and the cafes in the Palais 
Royal for new recruits. 

But so long as their star was in the ascendant, the 
popular leaders, the '' friends of the people," as 
they loved to call themselves after the manner of 
their kind, were the most faithful patrons of the 
cafes of the Palais Royal. " At last our turn has 
come to enjoy life," blurted out Danton at the end 
of a luxurious dinner in one of those cafes. ' ' Sump- 
tuous homes," he continued, '^ delicate fare, ex- 
quisite wines, silks and satins to wear, beautiful 
women — all these are the rewards of power. Since 
we are the stronger, let us therefore appropriate 
them. After all, what is the Revolution? A battle. 
And, as in every battle, should not the leaders share 
among themselves the spolia opimaf " And so 
•Desmoulins cared nothing about celebrating the 
Republic unless it meant a dinner of the expensive 



144 Old Paris 

viands and wines of Meot's, and Barere and Herault- 
Sechelies sipped their costly liqueur as they 
talked of regenerating France in a bath of blood. 
It is a pity the history of the cafes of the Palais 
Eoyal is not better remembered; no record shows 
so luridly how the masses have always been the 
dupes of those who pose as their friends, men com- 
pact of the vilest hypocrisy and shouting for de- 
mocracy and liberty as the easiest method of attain- 
ing notoriety and lining their own pockets. All the 
leaders of the Revolution were alike; the most elo- 
quent members of the Commune, such as Hebert and 
Chaumette, would orate by the hour on the miseries 
of the people and the sins of the nobles, and then 
make straight for Meot's or Beauvillier's to recup- 
erate their jaded patriotism on the rarest dishes and 
most expensive wines. 

One other restaurant of the Palais Royal must 
not be forgotten, the Trois Freres Provengaux. As 
its name suggests, this was the enterprise of three 
brothers who hailed from Provence. Having vine- 
yards of their own, it occurred to them that a Paris 
depot for the sale of the product might be advisable, 
but as they soon discovered that it would be wise to 
offer their clients something to eat as well as drink, 
it was not long ere they turned their establishment 
into a fully-equipped restaurant. And that it fig- 
ured prominently in the convivial life of Paris from 
the early nineteenth century onward is obvious from 



Caf6s of the Right Bank 145 

the place it occupies in literature. Balzac had much 
to say about it in his ^' Scenes from Paris Life," 
and Alfred de Musset, it will be remembered, made 
choice of one of its rooms as the scene in which the 
hero of his '' La Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle " 
had his parting interview with the woman he loved. 
Lord Lytton, too, in '' The Parisians," makes that 
restaurant the favourite haunt of his dandified 
Frederic Lemercier. It was thither he took the 
young Marquis de Rochebriant at the opening of 
the story, and his picture of its crowded rooms and 
its fashionable guests, who included " a saturnine 
Englishman who dined off a beef-steak and pota- 
toes," is an interesting page of the history of the 
restaurant in its latter days. The bill for the two 
of fifty-nine francs bears witness that the prices 
were not moderate, while the manners of Lemercier, 
who ' ' looked round the salon with that air of inimi- 
table, scrutinizing, superb impertinence which dis- 
tinguishes the Parisian dandy," suggest that the 
poser was a common sight at the Trois Freres. 

As has been noted above, the Cafe de la Regence 
can claim its Rousseau association; and another 
coffee-house, the Cafe du Grand Commun, figures in 
his " Confessions " as the scene of an unusual inci- 
dent in connection with the production of his 
* ' Devin du Village. ' ' The event affected Rousseau 
in such a singular manner that it is best given in his 
own words. " On the day following the rehearsal," 



146 Old Paris 

he wrote, ' ' I went to breakfast at the Cafe du Grand 
Commun, which was full of people, talking about the 
rehearsal of the previous evening, and the difficulty 
there had been of getting in. An officer who was 
present said that he had found no difficulty, gave a 
long account of the proceedings, described the au- 
thor, and related what he had said and done; but 
what astounded me most in his long description, 
given with equal confidence and simplicity, was that 
there was not a word of truth in it. It was perfectly 
clear to me, that the man who spoke so positively 
about this rehearsal had never been present, since 
he had before his eyes the author, whom he pre- 
tended to have observed so closely, and did not rec- 
ognize him. The most remarkable thing about this 
incident was the effect it produced on me. This man 
was somewhat advanced in years; there was noth- 
ing of the coxcomb or swaggerer about him, either 
in his manner or tone ; his countenance was intelli- 
gent, while his cross of Saint-Louis showed that he 
was an old soldier. In spite of his unblushing ef- 
frontery, in spite of myself, he interested me ; while 
he retailed his lies I blushed, cast down my eyes, and 
was on thorns; I sometimes asked myself whether 
it might not be possible to think that he was mis- 
taken, and really believed what he said. At last, 
trembling for fear that some one might recognize 
me and put him to shame, I hurriedly finished my 
chocolate without saying a word, and, holding down 



Cafes of the Right Bank 147 

my head as I passed him, I left the cafe as soon as 
possible, while the company were discussing his 
description of what had taken place. In the street, 
I found that I was bathed in perspiration." The 
comment of John Morley on this curious incident 
credits Eousseau with a feeling of humiliation at the 
meanness of another. 

Owing to their proximity to the meeting-place of 
the Jacobin Club several cafes and restaurants in 
the Rue St. Honore were more favoured by Robes- 
pierre and his followers than those of the Palais 
Royal. Perhaps the most famous of these was 
Venua's, the master of which, however, spread his 
net wide. How wide may be inferred from the fol- 
lowing advertisement, which appeared in a Paris 
newspaper in April, 1793. " Citizen Venua, restau- 
rant-keeper at No. 75, close to the Riding School, 
having also an entrance in the house called the Hotel 
des Tuileries, opposite the Jacobins, in the Rue 
Sainte-Honore, announces that on and after April 18 
there will be dancing on Sundays and holidays in 
his salon, where good beer and all kinds of iced 
drinks will be found. There are separate rooms for 
club-dinners. He contracts for all kinds of enter- 
tainments, including weddings and other festivi- 
ties." Such an announcement on the part of the 
obliging Venua can be understood only when it is 
remembered that his house had been the meeting- 
place of the moderate Girondists, who, however, 



148 Old Paris 

were now quite out of favour and power. It was 
essential, then, that something be done to attract 
customers of a new type. Hence the oblique refer- 
ence to the Tuileries Palace as " the house called 
the Hotel des Tuileries " and the willingness of the 
accommodating Venua to allow dancing on Sundays 
and holidays. 

Robespierre and his bosom friends did their best 
for Venua. If the Girondists no longer ate at his 
tables, the Jacobins would fill their places. Hence 
the memorable episode which took place in the res- 
taurant directly after the trial of Marie Antoinette. 
In a private room there met at dinner Robespierre, 
Saint-Just, Barere and Vilate. When requested to 
give an account of the Queen's trial, which he had 
witnessed, Vilate told how Hebert had charged 
Marie Antoinette with an unnatural offence with her 
son, and of the profound impression made in the 
court when she replied: '' I have not answered be- 
cause nature refuses to answer such a charge 
brought against a mother. I appeal to all the 
mothers that are here." The narration so moved 
Robespierre ' that he, dashing his plate to the 
ground, exclaimed: " That fool of a Hebert! Is it 
not enough that she is really a Messalina? Must he 
make her an Agrippina into the bargain, and so 
clothe her with interest in the eyes of the people 
during her last moments? " And then the conver- 
sation at Venua 's, punctuated by delicate foods and 



Gafes of the Right Bank 149 

costly wines, veered to the usual theme of the neces- 
sity of regenerating France in a bath of blood. 

Was it at Venua's, one wonders, that there took 
place that inhuman deed which was the climax of 
the murder of Berthier? Slain by the mob for the 
crime of being the son-in-law of another of their 
victims, his heart was torn from his almost still- 
living body, carried in triumph through the streets 
on the point of a sword, and then cut into fragments 
and dipped in wine and eaten in a cafe of the Eue 
St. Honore. 

It is a pleasant relief to turn from such a revolt- 
ing episode to the memory of a scene which took 
place in another Rue St. Honore cafe a quarter of 
a century later. When a young man of twenty-two, 
Archibald Alison, the industrious historian of Eu- 
rope, visited Paris at the time of its first occupation 
by the Allies, and he, in common with other Eng- 
lishmen, received so many kindnesses from the Rus- 
sian generals and officers that it was agreed to en- 
tertain them at dinner as some slight acknowledg- 
ment of their courtesy. The banquet took place at 
the Mapinot restaurant and proved a truly festive 
occasion. '' Sixteen sat down to dinner," Alison 
noted in his autobiography, '^ and the utmost cor- 
diality prevailed. Count Platoff, General Cherni- 
cheff. General Barclay de Tolly, Sir James Wylie, 
Sir William Crichton, and many others, honoured 
us with their presence — and, contrary to the usual 



150 Old Paris 

practice, the conviviality was prolonged to a late 
hour. We then saw, what was deeply interesting, 
Russian manners in moments of bonhomie and aban- 
don; and their manners and usages impressed us 
with a strong sense of their wealth of feeling and 
sincerity of disposition. As the evening advanced, 
and the ponche a la Romaine and iced champagne 
began to produce their wonted effects, they became, 
without being noisy or violent, in the highest degree 
demonstrative in their exuberance. Every one 
drank wine with his neighbour after the Continental 
fashion, touching their glasses before they put them 
to their lips, and many were the toasts drunk to the 
' Eternal Alliance of Great Britain and Russia.' 
Before parting, the company embraced after the 
German fashion; and the last thing I recollect is 
seeing my brother, a man six feet high, lifted up by 
Platoff, who was six inches taller, and kissed in the ; 
air. ' ' 

Still another cafe of the Rue St. Honore, Voisin's, 
which yet exists, calls for a brief allusion. That 
quiet and refined resort, and also expensive, cannot 
boast any Revolution memories, but takes a mild 
pride in its associations with dramatists and men 
of letters. It was the scene of a somewhat agitated 
little supper-party after the first performance of 
Alphonse Baudot's '' Les Rois en Exil," which con- 
sisted of the author and his wife and Zola and Jules 
de Goncourt. The reception of the play had been of 



Cafes of the Right Bank 151 

such a mixed nature that Madame Daudet was 
hardly in a mood for a festive occasion. Goncourt 
tried to cheer his friends with the reflection that the 
opposition of a portion of the audience had nothing 
political about it, while Zola enunciated the doctrine 
that a playwright ought to divest himself of nerves 
and be indifferent to public opinion. None of these 
things cheered Daudet, but after the champagne had 
circulated freely he began to recover his good spirits 
and take delight in the thought that his play had at 
any rate given him an opportunity to jibe at the old 
royalties and present a Bourbon running after an 
omnibus. 

Next to the Palais Eoyal there is no section of 
Paris so rich in the history of famous cafes as the 
Boulevard des Italiens, the most noted and most 
fashionable of all those thoroughfares. And for 
many years there was no resort so much in favour 
on the Boulevard des Italiens as the Cafe Tortoni. 
Even so late as the young manhood of George Moore 
it was true, as the novelist has remarked, that to be 
seen there would make the fact of his presence in 
the city public property; " Tortoni was a sort of 
publication. ' ' The cafe was established in the early 
days of the Empire, and had become famous by the 
time the Allies occupied Paris for the second time. 
Hence a visitor to the city in 1815 found the benches 
and chairs outside the building crowded with fash- 
ionable people, for they afforded an unrivalled point 



152 Old Paris 

of view from whence to watch the promenaders of 
the boulevards. 

In the upper portion of the building of which the 
cafe occupied the lower floor lived Louis Blanc at 
the time when he first became famous, and Albert 
Vandam relates how at nine o'clock each morning 
he used to come down to the cafe for his cup of cafe 
au lait, which was always the first cup of coffee 
served in the establishment. The same chronicler 
of Parisian history makes frequent references to the 
many interesting conversations he listened to out- 
side Tortoni's. It was there, for example, he heard 
the true history of the climax of '' Jeanne de Na- 
ples." That play, after dragging its weary length 
through the whole evening ended in an episode 
which saved it from failure. At the close the un- 
happy queen had the stage to herself and began 
what the author had intended to be a lengthy mono- 
logue. But hardly had she uttered a few lines than 
a stalwart soldier dashed on to the stage, seized 
her in his arms, and carried her off despite her 
struggles. The curtain fell to thunderous ap- 
plause. 

When the manager of the theatre, Lireux, made 
his usual appearance at Tortoni's the following af- 
ternoon, discussion at once reverted to the play of 
the previous night. " I can't understand," said 
one, *' how a man with such evident knowledge of 
stagecraft as the author showed in his denouement, 




OUTSIDE TORTONl'S. 



Cafes of the Right Bank 153 

could have been guilty of the tameness of what went 
before." 

Lireux laughed, and asked whether his friend 
imagined the author of the play was responsible for 
the climax! To a reply in the affirmative, he re- 
joined : 

" Well, he was not. His denouement was a speech 
which would have taken about twenty minutes, at 
the end of which the queen is tamely led off between 
two soldiers. I knew what would have been the re- 
sult: the students would have simply torn up the 
benches and Heav.en knows what else. You know 
that if the gas is left burning, if only a moment 
after twelve, there is an extra charge irrespective of 
the quantity consumed. I looked at my watch when 
she began to speak her lines. It was exactly thir- 
teen minutes to twelve; she might have managed 
to get to the end by twelve, but it was doubtful. 
What was not doubtful was the row that would have 
ensued, and the time it would have taken me to cope 
with it. My mind was made up there and then. I 
selected the biggest of the supers, and told him to 
go and fetch her, and you know the rest." 

Tortoni's patrons were not restricted to any one 
class. There were musicians, of whom Rossini may 
be taken as representative. When he won a suffi- 
cient income, he said, ' ' Now I 've done with music ; 
it has served its turn; and I'm going to dine every 
day at Tortoni's." Talleyrand, too, used to dine 



154 Old Paris 

and meet his friends here. Apd the artists, Alfred 
Stevens and Sidouard Manet among them, found the 
rendezvous an admirable place for the study of 
Parisian life. Manet, it is said, did not air his art 
at Tortoni's ; as an impressionist he was not greatly 
in public favour ; but he loved to haunt the cafe as 
a Parisian, watching the passing throng from the 
little terrace or lunching with friends inside. One 
of those friends says he can never go by the build- 
ing — which still exists at the corner of the Rue 
Taitbout, though no longer a cafe — without having 
a vision of the painter in his favourite haunt. 

On the same side of the Boulevard des Italiens, 
and almost next-door neighbours, once flourished the 
notorious Maison Doree and the Cafe Riche. As 
they were both notable for their high prices and as 
the former was owned by one named Hardy, it be- 
came a proverb that a man must be " very rich to 
dine at the Hardy, and very hardy to dine at the 
Riche." 

Many a page of fiction has been consecrated to 
describing the revelries that took place at the Mai- 
son Doree. Few restaurants even in Paris have 
catered more successfully for the entertainment of 
those who ate furiously and drank deep. The house 
was practically open all the year round. Of one 
client who lived close by the story is told that he 
divided his hours between his bed and the Maison 
Doree. Never rising until late in the day, he turned 



Cafes of the Right Bank 155 

into the restaurant about three in the afternoon, and 
there remained drinking or eating until the small 
hours of the next morning. Lord Lytton in " The 
Parisians " elected the Maison Doree for the scene 
of one of his liveliest supper parties at which there 
was much eulogy of champagne and great sorrow 
expressed for those nations which drank common 
beer or acrid wines. And Octave Feuillet allows one 
of his characters to get drunk under the same roof 
and then reel out into the street to throw a piece of 
gold into the mud and challenge a passing chiffonier 
to pick it up with his teeth. 

Although the Cafe Eiche still exists its most in- 
teresting history belongs to the past. In bygone 
years, as is obvious from the recollections of Albert 
Vandam, this cafe was in high favour with men of 
letters and musical celebrities, and even in the time 
of the Goncourts it was still the haunt of men who 
had greater interests in life than eating and drink- 
ing. '' The Cafe Riche," so runs an entry of 1857 
in the journal of the Goncourts, " seems to have 
become for the time being, the camp of literary dan- 
dyism. It is strange to see how entirely the public 
frequenting a given place are influenced by their 
surroundings; Bohemians are afraid of the white 
and gold, and red velvet ; besides, their great man, 
Murger, is renouncing his old gods, and passing over 
bag and baggage to the bourgeoisie and the world 
on the other side; his friends are crying out against 



156 Old Paris 

the apostasy and treason of this new Mirabeau. 
Baudelaire supped beside us this evening. He had 
no cravat, he was barenecked, his head was shaven, 
and he seemed equipped for the guillotine. And yet 
he was full of the latest dandyism ; his little hands 
were well washed, his nails pared, and as well cared 
for as those of a woman ; withal, the head of a ma- 
niac, a voice as piercing as steel, and an elocution 
suggesting a happy imitation of St. Just. He denied 
obstinately, and with a certain bitter anger, that he 
ever outraged public morals." 

It was at the Cafe Eiche, too, that Murger was 
last seen in the enjoyment of his prosperity and 
fame. He had just had another play accepted and 
was in high spirits. Yet a month or so later the 
pitiful end came. And Jules de Goncourt had another 
gloomy memory of the cafe, for it was while sitting 
at one of its tables that he had for unknown com- 
panion an aged man who to the waiter's question as 
to what he desired, replied, '' Alas, I desire the 
power to desire." 

According to Zola, the reputation of the Maison 
Doree as a haunt of feverish pleasure and debauch- 
ery descended to the Cafe Anglais, another resort on 
the Boulevard des Italiens which came into existence 
at the downfall of the Empire. Judging from 
widely scattered allusions, that house has always 
made a special appeal to the epicure, and even in 
the days of the siege of Paris was able to offer its 



Cafes of the Right Bank 157 

patrons '' such, luxuries as ass, mule, peas, fried po- 
tatoes, and champagne." And when the siege was 
raised and normal conditions were restored, the 
Cafe Anglais, on the testimony of George A. Sala, 

once more asserted itself as the shrine of the gour- 
mand. 

But the associations of this cafe suffer through 
the eminence of its cuisine. Such is the law of com- 
pensation. Perfect menus seem to have the knack 
of not creating interesting history. If the oysters 
are delicious in flavour, the Crecy soup ideal, the 
perdrix aux cJioiix done to a turn, and the wine '' so 
much purple velvet to the taste," what more can 
be demanded? Certainly not a volume of legend. 
And so the Cafe Anglais must be content to shine 
in the pages of Zola as the scene of that sumptuous 
repast of which the sole purpose was to win for 
Silvianne a favourable notice from the dramatic 
critic who had been invited to the party. '^ While 
the flowers scattered perfume through the room, 
and the plate and crystal glittered on the snowy 
cloth, an abundance of delicious and unexpected 
dishes was handed round — a sturgeon from Eussia, 
prohibited game, truffles as big as eggs, and hot- 
house fruit as full of flavour as if it were naturally 
matured. It was money flung out of the window, 
simply for the pleasure of wasting more than other 
people, and eating what they could not procure. 
The influential critic, though he displayed the ease 



158 Old Paris 

of a man accustomed to every sort of festivity, 
really felt astonished at it all, and became servile, 
promising his support, and pledging himself far 
more than he really wished to." So the function 
was a success, and the Cafe Anglais could flatter 
itself that it had secured the creation of another 
theatrical '' star." 

And yet it would be unjust to overlook the fact 
that there was one restaurant on the Boulevard des 
Italiens which combined refinement with memorable 
associations. This was the Cafe de Paris — not to 
be confused with the modern establishment of that 
title, with which its only link is that of a name — 
which Thackeray introduced into '' Vanity Fair " 
as the scene of the gambling squabble between 
Becky and her husband and Colonel and Mrs. 
O'Dowd. That, however, was a blunder on Thack- 
eray's part; he was too previous by some seven 
years, for the Cafe de Paris did not open its doors 
until 1822. Even had it been in existence during 
the winter following the battle of Waterloo, it was 
not the kind of resort which would have served the 
purposes of the adventurous Becky. Occupying a 
large suite of apartments in a mansion at the corner 
of the Eue Taitbout, the cafe was remarkable for its 
innocence of the usual display of white and gold, 
while the absence of mirrors elicited from Lord 
Palmerston the testimonial that '' the epicure was 
not constantly reminded that, when in the act of 



Cafes of the Right Bank 159 

eating, he was not much superior to the rest of hu- 
manity." The rooms, indeed, were such that they 
might have been quickly transformed into private 
apartments for a family of wealth and refinement. 

When the cafe first opened its doors it could 
boast a heritage of history. For its salons had 
been the home of Prince Demidoff, the eccentric and 
enormously wealthy descendant of that Russian 
blacksmith serf who conducted an iron foundry for 
Peter the Great and was ennobled by that monarch. 
The Demidoff wealth was greatly increased by 
mining operations, and hence that representative 
who had an establishment in Paris had ample means 
to indulge his every whim. It may be imagined, 
then, that the apartments secured for the Cafe de 
Paris were unlike the salons of any other restau- 
rant in the city. Albert Vandam, its most eulogistic 
historian, tells us that the furniture was tasteful 
and costly, the rooms carpeted throughout, and that 
'' the attendance was in every respect in keeping 
with the grand air of the place." No coal or gas 
was used: '' lamps and wood fires upstairs; char- 
coal, and only that of a peculiar kind, in the kitch- 
ens, which might have been a hundred miles distant, 
for all we knew, for neither the rattling of dishes 
nor the smell of preparation betrayed their vicinity. 
A charming, subdued hum of voices attested the 
presence of two or three score of human beings at- 
tending to the inner man; the idiotic giggle, the 



160 Old Paris 

affected little shrieks of the shop-girl or housemaid 
promoted to be the companion of the quasi-man of 
the world was never heard there." Such being the 
appointments and traditions of the cafe, Alfred de 
Musset's remark that '' you could not open its doors 
for less than fifteen francs " is not surprising. 

All through its history the Cafe de Paris was dis- 
tinguished as being an exception to the rule that 
perfect cuisine means empty annals. When Balzac 
called to announce that he was bringing a Russian 
guest to dinner and to request that the management 
would put its best foot forward, he was answered, 
'' Assuredly, monsieur, we will do so, because it is 
simply what we are in the habit of doing every day. ' ' 
The eulogist of the cafe affirms that that was not an 
empty boast. Never was he told that a certain dish 
could not be recommended or that the fish could not 
be guaranteed. And there were no free-and-easy 
interchanges between waiters and guests ; the latter 
never called the former by their names, and the 
former never spoke of a customer as ^' No. 5 " but 
as " the gentleman at table No. 5." One of the most 
renowned dishes of the house, says Vandam, was 
Veau a la casserole, ' ' the like of which I have never 
tasted elsewhere. Its recuperative qualities were 
vouched for by such men as Alfred de Musset, Bal- 
zac, and Alexandre Dumas. The former partook of 
it whenever it was on the bill ; the others often came, 
after a spell of hard work, to recruit their mental 



Cafes of the Right Bank 161 

and bodily strength with, it, and maintained that 
nothing set them up so effectually." The visits of 
Balzac, however, were spasmodic, as might be in- 
ferred from the constantly chaotic condition of his 
finances ; those of De Musset were frequent, as also 
were the calls of Dumas, Eugene Sue, and many 
others. The latter was a confirmed poser, and after 
his dinner in the cafe would stand on the steps smok- 
ing his cigar and listening to the conversation with 
a superior air. 

Dumas, on the other hand, was always his own 
hearty self, and was so great a favourite with the 
cafe management that he was the only patron who 
was allowed in the kitchens. One after-dinner inci- 
dent at the cafe is cited by Vandam as an illustra- 
tion of Dumas' good nature and an example of his 
fondness for culinary figures of speech. The party 
included a provincial professor, whose cameo breast- 
pin was greatly admired, and notably by Dumas, 
who remarked that it was a portrait of Julius 
Caesar. To the question as to whether he were an 
archaeologist, Dumas replied that he was '^ abso- 
lutely nothing," only to be challenged again by the 
professor on the ground that he had recognized 
Julius Cassar. But that, Dumas said, was not won- 
derful as Cassar was a Roman type, and besides he 
knew Caesar ^' as well as most people, and perhaps 
better." That was a claim too startling for a pro- 
vincial professor, and his amazement was increased 



162 Old Paris 

when Dumas claimed to have written a history of 
the great Roman. The professor had never heard 
of the book ; it was not known in the learned world, 
surely a history of Caesar ought to have made a sen- 
sation. '' Mine has not made any," responded the 
imperturbable Dumas. ^' People read it, and that 
was all. It is the books which it is impossible to 
read that make a sensation: they are like the 
dinners one cannot digest; the dinners one 
digests are not as much as thought of next morn- 
ing. ' ' 

As may be inferred from the foregoing, the Cafe 
de Paris was eminently respectable. It had no dubi- 
ous clients. That was well known to Louis Philippe, 
for when he was told that his sons, who were sup- 
posed never to be out at night, had been seen at the 
Cafe de Paris the previous evening, he remarked, 
*' That's all right. As long as they do not go to 
places where they are likely to meet Guizot, I don't 
mind. ' ' Such a testimonial from such a king is con- 
clusive. 

\ Although Thackeray perpetrated an anachronism 
in connection with the Cafe de Paris and must not 
be relied upon as a historian of that establishment, 
his knowledge of Terre's eating-house in the Rue 
Neuve des Petits Champs was evidently based upon 
intimate personal experience. Hence the proud pre- 
eminence of the English novelist as the author of 
*' The Ballad of Bouillabaisse," a poem which de- 



Cafes of the Right Bank 163 

serves quotation in full because it is unique in the 
verse annals of the inns and taverns of old Paris. 



" A street there is in Paris famous, 

For which no rhyme our language yields, 
Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is — 

The New Street of the Little Fields. 
And here's an inn, not rich and splendid, 

But still in comfortable case; 
The which in youth I oft attended, 

To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse. 

" This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is — 

A sort of soup or broth, or brew, 
Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes. 

That Greenwich never could outdo; 
Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron, 

Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace; 
All these you eat at Terre's tavern. 

In that one dish of Bouillabaisse. 

" Indeed, a rich and savoury stew 'tis; 

And true philosophers, methinks. 
Who love all sorts of natural beauties. 

Should love good victuals and good drinks 
And Cordelier or Benedictine 

Might, gladly, sure, his lot embrace, 
Nor find a fast-day too afflicting. 

Which served him up a Bouillabaisse. 

" I wonder if the house still there is? 
Yes, here the lamp is, as before; 
The smiling red-cheeked ecaillere is 
Still opening oysters at the door. 



164 Old Paris 

Is Terre still alive and able? 

I recollect his droll grimace: 
He'd come and smile before your table, 

And hope you liked your Bouillabaisse. 

" We enter — nothing's changed or older. 
' How's Monsieur Terre, waiter, pray? ' 
The waiter stares, and shrugs his shoulder — 
' Monsieur is dead this many a day.' 

* It is the lot of saint and sinner, 

So honest Terre's run his race.' 

* What will Monsieur require for dinner? ' 

* Say, do you still cook Bouillabaisse? ' 

" 'Oh, oui. Monsieur ' 's the waiter's answer; 

* Quel vin Monsieur desire-t-il? ' 

' Tell me a good one.' — ' That I can, Sir: 
The Chambertin with yellow seal.' 

' So Terre's gone,' I say, and sink in 
My old accustom'd corner place; 

* He's done with feasting and with drinking, 

With Burgundy and Bouillabaisse.' 

" My old accustom'd corner here is, 

The table still is in the nook; 
Ah! vanish'd many a busy year is 

This well-known chair since last I took. 
When first I saw ye, carl luoghi, 

I'd scarce a beard upon my face. 
And now a grizzled, grim old fogy, 

I sit and wait for Bouillabaisse. 

" Where are you, old companions trusty 
Of early days here met to dine? 
Come, waiter! quick, a flagon crusty — 
I'll pledge them in the good old wine. 



Cafes of the Eight Bank 165 

The kind old voices and old faces 

My memory can quick retrace; 
Around the board they take their places 

And share the wine and Bouillabaisse. 

" There's Jack has made a wondrous marriage; 

There's laughing Tom is laughing yet; 
There's brave Augustus drives his carriage; 

There's poor old Fred in the Gazette; 
On James's head the grass is growing: 

Good Lord! the world has wagged apace 
Since here we set the Claret flowing, 

And drank, and ate the Bouillabaisse. 

" Ah me! how quick the days are flitting! 

I mind me of a time that's gone. 
When here I'd sit, as now I'm sitting, 

In this same place — but not alone. 
A fair young form was nestled near me, 

A dear, dear face looked fondly up, 
And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me 

— There's no one now to cheer my cup. 

" I drink it as the Fates ordain it. 

Come, fill it, and have done with rhymes: 
Fill up the lonely glass, and drain it 

In memory of dear old times. 
Welcome the wine, whate'er the seal is; 

And sit you down and say your grace 
With thankful heart, whate'er the meal is. 

— Here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse! " 

To return for a little to the Grands Boulevards. 
From the Place de la Eepublic to the Place de la 
Madeleine there are scattered other cafes or memo- 
ries of cafes which have figured more or less notably 
in the history of Paris. There is Maire's, for ex- 



166 Old Paris 

ample, in the Boulevard St. Denis, which dates back 
to an unpretentious origin. ^ ' Ah me ! ' ' sighed 
Jules de Goncourt, ' ' about the year '50, in the days 
when Maire was a common wine-seller, possessing 
behind his zinc counter only one tiny room, where, 
by dint of squeezing, you could get in six people, 
and old Father Maire did his own waiting, the food 
was served on real plate to those whose culinary 
taste was worth consideration." And then the dia- 
rist summoned up the memories of the haricot mut- 
ton, the truffled macaroni, and the splendid minor 
Burgundy from the cellars of Louis Philippe which 
had once given him such palatable delight. Less 
than a decade was sufficient to change all that, and 
few patrons of the restaurant to-day have any no- 
tion of its modest origin and early glories of cuisine. 
For those whose memory can stretch back a gen- 
eration or so, the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle recalls 
a unique experiment. The Cafe Litteraire was an 
attempt to combine the pursuit of knowledge and the 
pursuit of pleasure at the cost of one investment. 
The footnote of the menu provided the explanation. 
*' Every customer," it read, " spending a franc in 
this establishment is entitled to one volume of any 
work, to be selected at will from our vast collection ; 
or in that proportion up to the largest sum he may 
expend." The cafe, in short, was a brave attempt 
to popularize literature on lines which have since 
been applied so successfully to pounds of tea or 



Cafes of the Right Bank 167 

bundles of cigars. To accumulate a respectable 
library of classics and at the same time eat so many- 
meals, or drink so many cups of coffee, or play so 
many games of billiards, promised a royal and easy 
road to knowledge. The establishment was planned 
and appointed on a palatial scale, and in the vesti- 
bule the client was greeted by a waiter and a sub- 
editor, each of whom proffered his bill of fare. 
After a dinner or a game of billiards, the customer 
was presented with book vouchers equal to the 
amount he had expended, which were duly exchanged 
for the volumes most to that customer's taste. For 
a time the scheme was exceedingly popular, but at 
last the novelty wore off and the Literary Cafe had 
to close its doors. 

Further west, the Boulevard Montmartre revives 
the memory of that Cafe Madrid which had fame 
thrust upon it in such a singular manner. Accord- 
ing to Daudet, it was because Carjat and other young 
lyricals came to the conclusion that the absinthe of 
the Cafe des Varietes tasted of straw that they 
crossed the road and hung up their lyres and hats in 
the Cafe Madrid. Prior to that event the cafe had 
been merely a large, ^' rather melancholy tavern, 
with faded divans and clouded mirrors," haunted 
by a few Spaniards and littered with some old num- 
bers of " Iberia." But the advent of Carjat and 
his friends effected a startling change. The hidal- 
gos fled, but Carjat took up his position near the 



168 Old Paris 

cafe window and was so successful in harpooning 
the passers-by that the Cafe Madrid quickly became 
the fashionable literary drinking-place. 

Albert Vandam knew the Cafe Madrid, but chiefly 
as one of the early haunts of Gambetta. Daudet, 
however, explains that at first the atmosphere of 
the resort was literary and only gradually changed 
to a political flavour. He has left some vivid pen 
portraits of its most famous patrons : Jules Valles, 
'' his nose in his absinthe, joked, sneered, spied on 
others from the corner of his eyes, and watched the 
cafe, seeking types for his book on ' Eefracto- 
ries; ' " the painter Courbet, " conventional peas- 
ant, puffy with pride and beer; " Paschal Grousset, 
' ' a pretty little gentleman, gloved, pomatumed, and 
curled with tongs, having, both for speech and wri- 
ting, that deplorable gift which is called facility; " 
Delescluze, " nervous and high-strung as an Arab 
steed." All these, however, were powerless to avert 
the change which came over the place as soon as 
Gambetta was caught by the industrious Carjat. He 
and others of like mind quickly established them- 
selves in their own corner of the cafe and from that 
corner there radiated an influence which at length 
dominated the entire establishment. '' Of the men 
of letters of the first period, ' ' said Daudet, ' * some, 
like Banville, Babou, Monselet, had fled, frightened 
away by the stupid racket; others were dead, such 
as Baudelaire, Delvan, and Charles Bataille. Some, 



Cafes of the Right Bank 169 

like Castagn^ry and Carjat himself, had gone over 
to Gambetta. Politics had evidently seized upon all 
the tables." 

But that was not the worst. By and by Roche- 
fort descended upon the Cafe Madrid and founded 
the Marseillaise cotery. '' Then a cloud rained 
down upon us of students, old and pretentious, im- 
provised journalists, without wit, without spelling, 
as ignorant of Paris as Patagonians, children with 
beards, who thought themselves called upon to re- 
generate the world, pedants of republicanism, all 
wearing waistcoats a la Robespierre, cravats a la 
Saint- Just — the Raoul Rigaults, the Tridons, 
the youth of the Schools who had no youth and no 
scholarship, did not love to laugh, and were sulky 
and savage; celebrities of Belleville, such as the 
famous planner of the club of things, pawn-heads^ 
greasy collars, greasy hair; and all the cracked- 
brains, the trainers of snails, the saviours of the 
people, all the discontented, all the good-for-noth- 
ings, all the idlers, the incapables." All this was 
less endurable than straw-flavoured absinthe. So 
the true lyricals reached for their hats and lyres 
once more and sought a quieter haven elsewhere. 

Of the Cafe de la Paix in the Boulevard des Capu- 
cines there is little to record save that it was the 
favourite resort of the Imperialists of the Second 
Empire and much haunted by the spies of the oppo- 
site party; while of the Durand, in the Place de la 



170 Old Paris 

Madeleine, the final chapter has been enacted while 
these pages are being written. That restaurant has 
had an unusual career. In its early days it was in 
high favour among economical parents who used to 
dine there with their children on their " days out " 
from school because it was '' so cheap," but after 
the time of the Commune it aspired to rank with 
such no-priced-menu establishments as the Cafe 
Anglais and the Cafe Eiche. The Durand, indeed, 
acquired the habit of high prices during the siege 
of Paris, as witness a bill for seventy-one francs 
for a breakfast for two, and found it so seductive 
that it became second nature. It had its G-ambetta 
and Boulanger traditions, and its wine cellar was 
supposed to hold stores of precious vintages rescued 
from the Tuileries in the fire of forty years ago, 
but these were not sufficient to save it from that 
mortality which has overtaken so many famous 
haunts of the Empire. 

Among the many Parisian cafes which have dis- 
appeared but have attained immortality in the an- 
nals of gourmandism or in the pages of fiction a 
distinguished place belongs to the Eocher de Can- 
cale. More than a century ago it figured in the 
" Almanach des Gourmands " as a " public-house " 
celebrated for its oysters, but at the time Balzac 
wrote '' La Cousine Bette " it had attained an 
European fame. And that it was in great favour 
among high-living Parisians is amply demonstrated 



Cafes of the Right Bank 171 

by Carabine stipulating the holding in its salons 
of the dinner which was designed to clear np 
the mystery as to whether Combabus had or had 
not a mistress. The setting was worthy of the occa- 
sion : the handsomest room in the restaurant where 
all Europe had dined, all the more dazzling by that 
splendid service of plate which had been made ex- 
pressly for entertainments ^' where vanity pays the 
bill in bank-notes. ' ' And the guests fitted into the 
picture: Combabus himself, he of the '^ ineffable 
waistcoats," and spotless patent-leather boots; and 
Carabine, with her unrivalled shoulders and throat 
as round as though turned in a lathe; and Jenny 
Cadine, in a dress of incredible splendour ; and Cy- 
dalise, with her distracting youthfulness '' that 
might have stirred the senses of a dying man ; ' ' and 
Josepha, in her rich velvet gown and eleven rows 
of pearls on each arm. 

Without entering into full details, Balzac conveys 
the impression of a meal suggestive of the 
resources of the Rock of Cancale. " Oysters ap- 
peared at seven o 'clock ; at eight they were drinking 
iced champagne. Every one is familiar with the bill 
of fare of such a banquet. By nine o 'clock they were 
talking as people talk after forty-two bottles of 
various wines, drunk by fourteen people. Of all the 
party, the only one affected by the heady atmos- 
phere was Cydalise, who was humming a tune. 
None of the party, with the exception of the poor 



172 Old Paris 

country girl, had lost their reason; the drinkers 
and the women were the experienced elite of the 
society that sups. Their wits were bright, their 
eyes glistened, but with no loss of intelligence, 
though the talk drifted into satire, anecdote, and 
gossip." But Balzac's report of the conversation 
probably did more than justice to the talk common 
in the salons of the restaurant, even though its blend 
of slang and cool cynicism may have been a faithful 
reflection of its usual trend. 

While Balzac was penning the history of that 
sumptuous banquet Henry Murger was living 
through the experiences which enabled him to por- 
tray a type of cafe Hfe far removed from that of 
the luxurious Rock of Cancale. The Cafe Momus, 
which stood in the gloomy Rue des Pretres Saint- 
Germain-l'Auxerrois, has long given place to a com- 
mercial building of a most mundane character, but 
will live for many a year in the pages of ^' Scenes 
de la Vie de Boheme," as well as in the annals con- 
tinued by Champfleury. The four Bohemians, Ro- 
dolphe and Schaunard, and Marcel and Colline, with 
their attendant divinities, were not the only notable 
patrons of the cafe. Schanne, the prototype of 
Schaunard, has told us that the almost daily fre- 
quenters also included, in addition to Champfleury, 
Andre Thomas, Monselet, Jean Journet, Gustave 
Mathieu, Pierre Dupont, Baudelaire, Gerard de Ner- 
val, and occasionally Arsene Houssaye. 




THE CAFE MOMUS. 



Cafes of the Eight Bank 173 

Yet it is of the Bohemians themselves the pilgrim 
thinks most when passing the building which now 
stands on the site of their cafe, and of the lively do- 
ings and sparse meals in which they participated. 
Nothing sums up the various scenes so vividly as 
the famous formal statement made by the landlord 
of the house, with its indictment of Rodolphe for 
carrying off all the newspapers to his own room 
and also compelling the said landlord to subscribe 
to '' The Beaver." Then there was the charge that 
Colline and Rodolphe sought relaxation from their 
intellectual labours by playing backgammon from 
ten in the morning until midnight, oblivious that the 
cafe had but one backgammon-board. And Marcel 
so far forgot that the cafe was a public place as to 
bring thither his painter's equipment and even 
send for models of a type likely to shock other fre- 
quenters of the house. But the gravest charge of 
all, and no doubt the most well-founded, was that 
'' not content with being very poor customers, these 
gentlemen have tried to be still more economical. 
Under pretence of having discovered the mocha of 
the establishment in improper intercourse with 
chicory, they have brought a lamp with spirits of 
wine, and make their own coffee, sweetening it with 
their own sugar ; all of which is an insult to the es- 
tablishment. " And the irregular influence of the 
Bohemians had so corrupted the morals of Bergami, 
the whiskered waiter, that he had addressed to the 



174 Old Paris 

mistress of the house a piece of poetry of a warmly 
amorous nature. 

Even Murger did not tell all the history of the 
Cafe Momus. There were practical jokes enacted 
within its modest salons and tragedies begun there 
which find no place in his pages. It is true the histo- 
rian of Bohemianism touches now and then a poign- 
ant note of pathos, but the truth was even more 
pathetic. He might have told of many frequenters 
of the cafe whose life went out in tragic suicide or 
violent death; of the insanity and self-destruction 
of Charles Barbara, or Musette's sailing away for 
Marseilles and finding a sea-grave in the Mediterra- 
nean. Most pitiful of all, perhaps, was the case of 
Esperance Blanchon, who, his portrait painted and 
despatched to his mother, sought surcease from the 
burden of life at the bottom of a lonely pond. These 
are indeed memories in lurid contrast with the vis- 
ions of wealth, beauty, and dissipation recalled by 
Balzac, but no chronicle of the festive life of Paris 
should pass them by. 

Almost as Bohemian, though of a more artistic 
nature and minus that stress of poverty which bore 
so heavily upon Murger and his friends, are the 
memories recalled by the Cafe Guerbois near the 
Rue de St. Petersbourg. That was the rallying- 
ground of the Impressionists. It has already been 
noted that Edouard Manet did not air his art here- 
sies at Tortoni's; indeed, for many years he had 



Cafes of the Eight Bank 175 

little need to discuss his theories in the chief haunts 
of the boulevards; his pictures had so violated the 
aesthetic canons of the day that when he was seen 
on the streets people turned round to gaze at him, 
and his advent at a fashionable cafe created a gen- 
eral murmur of uncomplimentary comment. 

All this jarred upon the sensitive and refined na- 
ture of Manet. He must often have wished he had 
continued his career as a sailor, which, if it did noth- 
ing else, did provide him with an opportunity to 
paint as he liked without pandering to the academic 
tastes of Salon juries. For, on his one voyage, it 
became necessary to re-colour a cargo of Dutch 
cheese which had deteriorated in the sea air, and 
the task fell to Manet, who, in later years, delighted 
to relate how he had restored those cheeses to their 
proper tint. But, for many years, he found it im- 
possible to repeat by his pictures the satisfaction 
he had given the captain of his ship. As a painter 
he was regarded by critics and public alike as a 
pariah and became the butt of caricature and witti- 
cism. At last, however, he won a few disciples to 
his side, and the question arose as to how they could 
best keep in touch with each other. This created a 
desire for regular meetings, and, as Manet's studio 
was not suitable for a rendezvous, the Cafe Guer- 
bois, a spacious and comfortable establishment, was 
chosen for the purpose. Here, then, for some four 
or five years, the Impressionists and their literary 



176 Old Paris 

friends of allied tastes regnlarly met to confirm each 
other in the despised gospel of realism. The group 
was gradually enlarged by the inclusion of artists 
who were not altogether Impressionists but who 
were sympathetic towards a new point of view. The 
men of letters included Zola, Cladel, Vignaud, Ba- 
bou, and Burty, the three latter being most faithful 
in their attendance. By and by the artists and wri- 
ters invited many of their friends and acquaintances 
to the cafe, with the result that on certain evenings 
its spacious salons were uncomfortably crowded. 
' ' Manet, ' ' says Theodore Duret, the historian of the 
Impressionists, '' was the dominating figure; with 
his animation, his flashing wit, his sound judgment 
on matters of art, he gave the tone to the discus- 
sions. Moreover, as an artist who had suffered per- 
secution, who had been expelled from the Salons, 
and excommunicated by the representatives of of- 
ficial art, he was naturally marked out for the place 
of leadership among a group of men whose one 
common feature, in art and literature, was the spirit 
of revolt." Hence the Cafe Guerbois has a distin- 
guished place among those public resorts which 
have been associated with the mental revolutions 
having their origin in the French capital. 

One of Manet's greatest offences was the intro- 
duction of a black cat into his '' Olympia " picture. 
The subject of that canvas was a nude woman re- 
clining on a bed, the high tones of which were ac- 



Cafes of the Right Bank 177 

centuated by the negress who is handing her mis- 
tress a large bouquet, and — by a black cat perched 
with arched back on a corner of the bed. Every- 
thing was forgiven except the cat • it was elected as 
the special object of criticism and for a long time 
all Paris was agitated over that unfortunate animal. 
Now, perhaps, it was the recollection of that uproar 
which was the determining motive with Rodolphe 
Salis when he cast around for a name for that caba- 
ret artistique which he decided to open on the Rue 
Victor Masse at Montmartre. The Chat Noir was, 
at any rate, the designation chosen for that pioneer 
of those blends of the cafe-concert and the cafe- 
brasserie which have since become so common and 
so popular on Montmartre. 

None of the successors of the Chat Noir has at- 
tained anything like the fame of the original. 
M. Salis, although a failure as poet and painter, had 
a rare gift in catering for literary Bohemians. 
From being an undistinguished wine-shop, the re- 
sort of a few unappreciated poets and painters of 
Montmartre, the Chat Noir suddenly developed into 
one of the sights of Paris. The primary cause of 
this transformation must be found in that flash of 
inspiration which prompted M. Salis to fit up his 
establishm^ent with quasi-antique properties, not 
forgetting a liberal supply of drinking-glasses, 
which were reputed to have been used by Villon, 
Voiture, and other distinguished Bohemians of ear- 



178 Old Paris 

lier ages. Nor was that all : the waiters of the es- 
tablishment were clad in imitations of the green- 
sprigged frock-coat sacred to the Academy, while 
the large gesturing and voluble Salis was in the 
habit of welcoming his guests with such phrases as, 
' ' Montmartre, the brains of Paris, is proud to clasp 
its sons to her bosom." When, to these novel at- 
tractions, were added the shadow dancers of Caran 
d'Ache, the piano extravagances of Tin chant, and 
the Pierrot of Willette, the vogue of the Chat Noir 
was fully established and the house ran a prosper- 
ous course for nearly twenty years. But, as with so 
many other experiments in Paris, the novelty wore 
off at last, and now nothing is left of the Chat Noir 
save its crudely painted sign-board of a black cat 
with saucer-like eyes which has found a home in the 
Musee Carnavalet. 

Numerous other cafes have made a fleeting ap- 
pearance in the annals of old Paris, such as the 
Turkish cafe whose marble tables were pressed into 
service for the dead bodies of the victims of 
Fieschi's infernal machine, or the Burgundy Vin- 
tage restaurant where Gallois, knife in hand, gave 
the significant toast of ^' To Louis Philippe! " but 
they all are represented in the types already de- 
scribed — types which are sufficient to illustrate how 
the descendants of the Cafe Procope reflected the 
life of Paris in all its aspects. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE SALONS 

In addition to its inns and taverns and cafes, 
Paris could, for more than two centuries, boast the 
possession of an institution which has no parallel 
in the social life of any other capital. This, of 
course, was the Salon, which, among the more ex- 
clusive classes of the community, was, in a sense, 
the counterpart first of the literary tavern, such as 
the Pomme de Pin, and then of the literary cafe. 
The Salon also occupies an important position in 
that social evolution of old Paris which finally had 
issue in the foundation of the club. Not in the sev- 
enteenth century, nor even by the middle of the 
eighteenth was the Parisian ripe for the club as a 
distinct institution; Bolingbroke was made aware 
of that fact by his failure to found a club for men, 
and years earlier Mile, de Scudery had explained 
why coteries restricted to her own sex were fore- 
doomed to ineptitude. " Whoever," she said, 
' ^ should write all that was said by fifteen or twenty 
women together would make the worst book in the 
world, even if some of them were women of intelli- 
gence. But if a man should enter, a single one, and 

179 



180 Old Paris 

not even a man of distinction, the same conversa- 
tion would suddenly become more spirituelle and 
more agreeable." No doubt tbat explains why some 
of the salon mistresses had scanty hospitality for 
members of their own sex. 

Prodigious ingenuity has been displayed in at- 
tempts to explain why the salon never took root in 
England and why every effort to establish it on 
American soil must prove abortive. It is not, as 
has been suggested, the ubiquity of the newspapers, 
or the lack of a leisured class, or the absence of the 
gift of being able to think aloud gracefully, but 
rather that neither the English nor the American 
temperament is given to posing. No doubt the pop- 
ularity of the inn and then the cafe may be partially 
accounted for by the social bent of the French 
genius, but an even more important factor may be 
found in the Gallic weakness for attitudinizing. 
And neither the inn nor the cafe provided such an 
unrivalled stage for the poser as the salon in its 
most sumptuous days; it furnished an uniquely ef- 
fective background for people who, in Horace Wal- 
pole's illuminating phrase, lived " in perpetual 
opera. ' ' 

Perhaps, also, too much has been affirmed as to 
the supposedly definite purpose for which the salon 
was founded. The impression left by some ac- 
counts is that the charter of that institution was 
from the first as sharply defined as the command- 



The Salons 181 

ments given to Moses on Sinai. This is to impute 
to inchoate origins the precision taught by a com- 
parative study of results ; far wiser is it to remem- 
ber that the salon, like Topsy, just " growed." 

In tracing the early stages of that growth it may 
be helpful to remember that at the opening of the 
seventeenth century the patricians of Paris would 
have shuddered at the thought of frequenting such 
resorts as the Pomme de Pin. It has been shown 
that a stranger, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, con- 
cluded it was beneath his dignity to visit even the 
heir to the British throne in an inn, and it is sig- 
nificant that the early records of the literary inns 
and taverns of Paris are practically barren of ref- 
erence to the nobles of the time. Henry IV may 
have been something of a democrat and sincere in 
his sympathy with the poorer classes, but such in- 
clinations were not shared by the members of his 
court. And yet many among his courtiers were not 
indifferent to the new spirit in the air — an inquir- 
ing spirit which had been created but not satisfied 
by the Renaissance. 

Altogether, then, the times were ripe for such an 
experiment as that made by the Marquise de Ram- 
bouillet in the first decade of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. Born in 1588, Catherine de Vivonne, daughter 
and heiress of the Marquis de Pisani, was still but 
a girl when she was married to Charles d'Angennes, 
afterwards Marquis de Rambouillet. A brief expe- 



182 Old Paris 

rience of the court of Henry IV was sufficient to 
wean her from such pleasures. Taking its tone from 
the somewhat boisterous manners and sensual incli- 
nations of the king, that court, with its atmosphere 
of intrigue and immorality, did not appeal to the 
refined temperament of the young marquise, and 
hence, about 1607, after the birth of her daughter 
Julie, she decided to withdraw from the royal circle 
and seek social happiness in the companionship of 
such friends of kindred spirit as she could gather 
round her in her own home. 

Such was the origin of that salon which has made 
the Hotel de Eambouillet so famous in the annals 
of old Paris. The mansion, which stood near the 
Palais Royal on the Rue St. Thomas-du-Louvre, was 
swept away many years ago, the present Grands 
Magasins du Louvre occupying a part of its site. 
At the beginning of her experiment the marquise 
had the house rearranged for the receptions she had 
in view, and when it was re-built in 1618 she was 
able to still further perfect her plans by providing 
several suites of private rooms in addition to the 
one stately apartment for general gatherings. In 
all these doings the Marquis de Rambouillet is but 
a shadowy figure, although it is recorded that to the 
end of his days he ^' loved his wife always as a 
lover." That is an exception in the history of the 
salon to be noted with gratitude; too many of the 
presiding ladies of later generations made either 



The Salons 183 

unhappy marriages or regarded their wedding vows 
as the lightest of their obligations. 

Without crediting the founder of the first salon, 
the ' ' cradle of polished society, ' ' with that fixed and 
detailed programme which is so often attributed to 
her, it may be presumed that the Marquise de Eam- 
bouillet was careful from the first to include in her 
circle none save those from whom she might antici- 
pate sensible conversation and refined manners. As 
much as that may be inferred from her own char- 
acter. She was, is the testimony of one witness, " a 
model of courtesy, wisdom, knowledge, and sweet- 
ness ; ' ' amiable and gracious, reported another, she 
corrected the bad customs of the age, " and taught 
politeness to all those of her time who frequented 
her house." Of the charms of her personal appear- 
ance there is the same unbroken praise, and as no 
portrait exists to challenge that eulogy it must be 
accepted as well founded. Her moral character, too, 
was unsullied; no calumny or scandal attaches to 
her name. 

That the social manners of the early seventeenth 
century were susceptible of improvement may be 
inferred from many incidents recorded at that time, 
while it is equally well established that the language 
in common use was not over-refined. It was, then, 
a useful task the young marquise set herself in an 
attempt to improve both. And, at the outset, she 
had, in the matter of conversation, an unexpected 



184 Old Paris 

ally. This was Honore d'Urfe, who published the 
first volume of his interminable '' Astree " in 1610. 
That prodigious pastoral romance, of which Hallam 
remarked that one cause of its popularity may have 
been due to its soothing effect " when read in small 
portions before retiring to rest," fitted in exactly 
with a part of the programme of the first salon. 
D'Urfe depicted on a larger than life-size scale the 
humble and ever faithful lover, and adorned him 
with such courtly manners and high-sounding con- 
versation that the hero of ' ' Astree ' ' seems to have 
been accepted on the spot as a model for the fre- 
quenters of the Hotel de Rambouillet. But that, in 
time, wrought their undoing. Their abandonment 
of their baptismal names for the sugary names of 
romance, and their indulgence in the artificial rhap- 
sodies of d'Urfe 's pastoral dummies brought them 
at last under the lash of Moliere's satire. 

One great service, however, the Hotel de Ram- 
bouillet did render; it provided a meeting-place 
where the man of letters was regarded as the equal 
of the noble or was at least able to meet him on 
common ground. No doubt many of the writers who 
were accorded the hospitality of the first salon, such 
as Saint-Amant for example, felt more at ease in 
such a resort as the Pomme de Pin and experienced' 
greater happiness in the wine-cup companionship of 
boon comrades than in mingling with the fine dames 
and gallants of the Hotel de Rambouillet, but it was 



The Salons 185 

an immeasurable gain for them and their craft that 
they were as welcome in that mansion as the most 
blue-blooded aristocrat. The influence of the circle 
may have tended to triviality in some respects, and 
to the unworthy exaltation of qualities in prose and 
verse which had no enduring merit, but it was an 
advance to have even such a tribunal for the hall- 
marking of literature. 

There, then, from time to time might have been 
met most of the great writers of the first half of the 
seventeenth century. The roll-call is a tribute to 
the Marquise de Rambouillet's catholic hospitality, 
for it includes the names of Voiture, Chapelain, 
Godeau, Benserade, Bossuet, Balzac, and Corneille, 
and of each some incident is recorded which is of 
value in attempting to re-picture the sayings and 
doings of that first salon. 

Bossuet, for example, is the subject of a story 
which is illuminating in view of the copiousness of 
his famous orations and his habit of never writing 
out his sermons. He happened to be present, al- 
though but a youth of sixteen, at a gathering when 
an animated discussion arose as to the merits or 
demerits of extempore preaching, the upshot of 
which was that it was resolved to make a test of 
the matter there and then. So the youthful Bossuet 
was called upon to mount a temporary rostrum and 
deliver an impromptu discourse to the company, a 
task so much to his liking that he is said to have 



186 Old Paris 

held the attention of his audience until midnight and 
won from the ever-ready Voiture the encomium, ' ' I 
have never heard any one preach so early and so 
late." 

Voiture, so much admired by Pope — 

" Ev'n rival Wits did Voiture's death deplore, 
And the gay mourn'd who never mourn'd before; 
The truest hearts for Voiture heav'd with sighs, 
Voiture was wept by all the brightest Eyes " — 

was a privileged member of the coterie. Sometimes 
his wit was a trial to the patricians; ''if he were 
one of us, he would be insupportable," ejaculated 
one aristocrat; but his readiness for all emergen- 
cies, his esprit, to use the catch-word of the day, the 
nimbleness with which he could turn the conversa- 
tion, or throw off a sonnet or an epigram, and, above 
all, the high regard in which he was held by Julie 
d'Angennes, the favourite daughter of the house, 
led to his being not only tolerated but even petted 
in that exclusive circle. Voiture, indeed, seems to 
have been the only poet who declined to contribute 
to that famous album of verse, the " Guirlande de 
Julie," by which the Marquis de Montausier urged 
his suit with the coy Julie; she called him her 
" dwarf king," and he may have had ambitions of 
his own. In any case, apparently he was not anx- 
ious for Julie to change her state, for she was his 
chief aider and abettor in carrying out those little 
comedies and other amusements which helped to re- 



The Salons 187 

lieve the somewliat severe decorum of the Hotel 
de Rambouillet. 

That such entertainments, and even practical 
jokes, were indulged in occasionally does lighten the 
somewhat academic gloom of the first salon. There 
were evidently some in the circle who did not alto- 
gether aspire to the name of precieuse. Among such 
must be counted the lively young Duchesse de 
Longueville, who, after Chapelain had read his ' ' La 
Pucelle," the pretentious work which ruined his 
reputation as a poet, candidly remarked that it was 
doubtless a very beautiful poem, ' ' but also very tire- 
some. ' ' The literary verdicts of the Hotel de Ram- 
bouillet were not always so discriminating. Cor- 
neille is said to have read many of his plays to the 
company, but in the case of the most famous, 
'^ Polyeucte," Voiture assured him that the opinion 
was adverse in spite of the praise indulged in his 
presence. That report weighed so much with the 
dramatist that he resolved to put the tragedy aside 
when an appeal from an actor led to its being 
submitted, with triumphal results, to a wiser 
audience. 

Among the other habitues of the Rambouillet 
salon Jean de Balzac seems to have been a promi- 
nent figure, and Godeau, too, until he was hurried 
off to a bishopric. Nor should the poet Benserade 
be forgotten, the author of that Job sonnet which, 
as compared with the merits of Voiture 's Urania 



188 Old Paris 

sonnet, long divided the wits of Paris into Hostile 
camps. One of Benserade's poems was translated 
by Dr. Johnson; it is typical of the trifles which 
won so much applause in the precieuse circles : 

" In bed we laugh, in bed we cry, 
And born in bed, in bed we die; 
The near approach a bed may show 
Of human bliss to human woe." v 

Balzac, on the other hand, was esteemed for his 
prose, for those high-flown letters which were so 
prized in select circles that he was pestered by 
countless correspondents, all anxious to secure in 
reply an original example of his epistolary genius. 
'^ I am harassed, I am teased to death," he ex- 
claimed ; ' ' I am in arrears to crowned heads. " This 
was flattering, but also a heavy tax on a man of 
such delicate health that in his thirtieth year he 
said he was as old as his father and '^ as much 
decayed as a ship after her third voyage to the 
Indies." 

All things considered, however, the most impor- 
tant habitue of the Hotel de Rambouillet was not a 
man but a woman, namely, Madeleine de Scudery, 
for she became the historian of the circle and the 
perpetuator of its traditions. Forgotten to-day by 
all save the student of the literary life of old Paris, 
and in that respect a notable illustration of that law 
of compensation which refuses posterior fame to 



The Salons 1S9 

those who have basked in contemporary reputation, 
Mile, de Scndery seems to have been the earliest, as 
she certainly was the most prolific blue-stocking of 
France. One of her friends described her as ' ' des- 
tined by Providence to blacken paper, for she sweat 
ink from every pore." Nature, it seems, also 
equipped her from her earliest years with a formi- 
dable facility for conversation, and as increase of 
appetite grew by what it fed on, her brother, so the 
story runs, had to resort to the drastic expedient of 
locking her in a room away from her friends each 
day until she had accomplished a given task of 
writing. These two gifts, a ready tongue and a 
facile pen, made her a desirable acquisition to the 
Rambouillet circle. 

And Mile, de Scudery found in that company a 
rare wealth of material susceptible of being turned 
into '' copy." She had already written one novel, 
a mere trifle of four volumes, when the Hotel de 
Eambouillet and its frequenters suggested a theme 
more commensurate with her fecund gifts. So she 
set to work on her romance of " Le Grand Cyrus," 
and, proceeding at the rate of two instalments a 
year, eventually wrote '^ finis " to a production 
which extended to ten volumes I Two other novels 
remained to be penned, one in eight and one in ten 
volumes, so that Mile, de Scudery 's four romances 
extended to no fewer than thirty-two volumes ! And 
those thirty-two volumes were once thought all too 



190 Old Paris 

few. No popular novelist of modern times has en- 
joyed more incense than Mile, de Scudery. She was 
adored by the clergy. '' I find," wrote one pulpit 
orator, '' so much in your works calculated to re- 
form the world, that, in the sermons I am now pre- 
paring for the court, you will often be on my table 
by the side of St. Augustine and St. Bernard." Nay, 
kings and queens delighted to honour her, for 
Louis XIV provided her with a pension and Chris- 
tina of Sweden sent her her portrait. 

If, awakened to curiosity by these unimpeachable 
testimonials, " Le Grand Cyrus " is rescued for a 
moment from the dusty oblivion of the top book- 
shelf, it will be found that its countless pages teem 
with characters bearing Persian or Babylonian' 
names, and that copious space is devoted to a place 
called the " Hotel Cleomire " and what happened 
within its walls. These subterfuges, however, are 
the thinnest of disguises; the " Hotel Cleomire " is 
the Hotel de Rambouillet, and the Persians and 
Babylonians are merely Parisians of the seventeenth 
century. Here, then, in these long-neglected pages, 
may be read the history of the first salon, the inter- 
minable chronicle of its wearisome affectation and 
pedantic gallantry, the details of that protracted 
course of wooing so well illustrated by the obstinate 
Julie, and the code of that ritual of ceremony which 
made a bed a throne. 

All that artificial life was, however, so much to 



The Salons 191 

the taste of Mile, de Scudery that when, through the 
death of the marquise, the Rambouillet salon was 
closed, she made an effort to continue its traditions 
under her own roof. Her reunions, called '' Same- 
dis,", because they were held each Saturday, were 
popular for some years but attracted men of letters 
rather than aristocrats. Yet her list of visitors was 
one of which she might have been proud, for it in- 
cluded Madame de Sevigne, Madame de La Fayette, 
Madame Scarron, the Duke of Rochefoucauld, Paul 
Pellison, and Valentin Conrart, not to mention 
many other aristocrats and wits who, though noted 
in their day, are now nothing but names. Of all 
these Pellison was the most devoted adherent, for 
his close friendship with Mile, de Scudery endured 
till death. There was so perfect an understanding 
between the two that when Pellison became disfig- 
ured by small-pox Mile, de Scudery told him he had 
abused the common liberty of men to be ugly. Per- 
haps they might have married had not the woman 
in the case held such decided views as to the dangers 
of wedded bonds. " I know," she admitted, '' that 
there are many admirable men who are worthy all 
my esteem and who can retain my friendship, but as 
soon as I think of them as husbands I regard them 
as masters, and so liable to become tyrants that I 
must hate them from that moment." Pellison, 
then, was never more than a friend, but a friend 
whom she desired to see or hear from every day. 



192 Old Paris 

But lie deserves remembrance also as the historian 
of Mile, de Scudery's salon and the chronicler of 
the letters and poems read at its gatherings. He 
tells how one member of the circle would recite four 
verses and another a dozen, and adds : ' ' All this is 
done gaily and without effort. No one bites his 
nails, or stops laughing and talking. There are 
challenges, responses, repetitions, attacks, repartees. 
The pen passes from hand to hand, and the hand 
does not keep pace with the mind." Over all those 
literary contests, however, there ever brooded an 
atmosphere of decorum, a decorum as proper as 
that which permeates the long-winded romances of 
the mistress of the salon. 

Those traditions of blameless propriety were not 
broken by that Marquise de Sevigne who held her 
salon in that Hotel de Carnavalet which still adorns 
Paris as the Musee Carnavalet. Educated by Jean 
Chapelain and Gilles Menage, it would have been 
surprising had she not proved something of a liter- 
ary prodigy, but it was her early widowhood and ab- 
sorbing love for her daughter which were the occa- 
sion of the development of that epistolary genius 
which has given her an enviable place in literature. 
Her salon in Paris, then, naturally took a flavour of 
letters, and was most free in its hospitality to such 
writers as La Rochefoucauld, Corneille, Eetz, Boi- 
leau, and Racine. Chief among her women friends 
was Madame de La Fayette, who once nursed an 



The Salons 193 

ambition to found a popular salon but finally con- 
tented herself with a more exclusive circle, which 
she entertained in that stately mansion which yet 
stands close to the Luxembourg. The favoured 
guests of Mme. de La Fayette included La Fontaine, 
the Prince de Conde, the Cardinal de Eetz, and, 
above all. La Eochefoucauld, who found in that 
tranquil society his most effectual refuge from the 
melancholy which prompted the penning of his 
famous *' Maxims." No doubt there was at times 
much witty or wise conversation, but as the hostess 
and the most favoured guest were both somewhat 
hypochondriacal and often in ill health the salon 
could not have been particularly cheerful. '' Mme. 
de La Fayette is always languishing," wrote Mme. 
de Sevigne, '^ M. de La Eochefoucauld is always 
lame ; we have conversation so sad that it seems as 
if there were nothing more to do but to bury us." 
And yet that languishing hostess was able to ac- 
complish literary work far more enduring than 
that of the robust and prolific Mile, de Scu- 
dery. 

Had there been any tendency to get out of hand 
shown by the frequenters of Mme. de La Fayette's 
salon, they would hardly have indulged such a pro- 
pensity on those occasions when the widow of Paul 
Scarron joined the circle, as she frequently did. 
Thus far her career had been of a character which 
goes far to explain the sobriety of her temperament. 



194 Old Paris 

FranQoise d'Aubigne was still but a child of sixteen 
when she became acquainted with the coarse and 
somewhat libertine Scarron, and elected to become 
his wife in preference to accepting his alternative 
to pay for her admission into a convent. Her 
steadying influence soon made itself felt in Scar- 
ron 's home. Prior to her advent the gatherings 
there had not been distinguished for refinement or 
sobriety; with her reign over the house there was 
inaugurated a respect for the decencies of conver- 
sation and a restraint in the use of strong drink. 
And yet, such were her mental powers and gifts of 
entertaining conversation, the Scarron salon be- 
came more popular than ever among the wits of 
Paris. And when the picaresque writer died, she 
was able, by the continuance of his pension, not only 
to continue entertaining but also to frequent other 
literary reunions. 

One result was that Mme. Scarron made the ac- 
quaintance of Mme. de Montespan, the mistress of 
Louis XIV, who, on the birth of her first child by 
the King, conceived the idea of entrusting its educa- 
tion to her new friend. Mme. Scarron accepted the 
task, and soon found ample employ in mothering 
that and the six other tokens of affection with which 
Mme. de Montespan favoured her royal lover. The 
sequel is well known — how Louis at last decided to 
have his natural children at court, how Mme. Scar- 
ron accompanied them and won the respect of the 




THE MARRIAGE OF MME. DE MAINTENON TO LOUIS XIV. 



The Salons 195 

king by her sterling qualities, how she was created 
the Marquise de Maintenon, and how at length 
Louis transferred his affections to the new mar- 
quise and in the end made her his wife. The su- 
premacy of Mme. de Maintenon had an important 
result for the social life of Paris in the close of the 
seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth 
centuries. Her serious nature gradually developed 
along religious lines until she acquired as great a 
reputation for piety as she had formerly enjoyed 
for esprit, and that change gave the finishing touch' 
of dulness to a court which was already distin- 
guished for its rigid etiquette. *' There is little 
stirring here," wrote Matthew Prior from Paris 
when Mme. de Maintenon 's power was at its height; 
*' the King is at his prayers," he added; and a few 
weeks later he referred with scorn to the " damned 
dinner ' ' he had eaten at Versailles and to the ' ' mel- 
ancholy and bigotry " of the court. That court 
had, indeed, become *' an infirmary of morose 
invalids " presided over by an elderly woman 
who was in turn under the domination of the 
Jesuits. 

Eeaction was inevitable, of course. What had 
happened in England after the restoration of 
Charles II might have warned Mme. de Maintenon 
that sobriety of life can be carried too far. Such a 
lesson was ignored by herself and Louis alike, and 
hence when the king's protracted reign came at 



196 Old Paris 

last to an end and the chief power of the state 
passed into the hands of the Duke of Orleans as 
Regent there began a period which has never been 
equalled even in France for unrestrained debauch- 
ery. " All that we read in ancient historians," Al- 
ison wrote, " veiled in the decent obscurity of a 
learned language, of the orgies of ancient Babylon, 
was equalled, if not exceeded, by the nocturnal 
revels of the Eegent Orleans." The incidents of 
those revels have been vividly described by one who 
witnessed them, St. Simon to wit, in these frank 
sentences : " At the suppers of the Regent, very 
strange society was assembled — his mistresses, 
opera-girls, frequently the Duchess de Berri, certain 
ladies of easy virtue, men whom he did not hesitate 
to name as roues, and others without name, but no- 
torious for their wit and their profligacy. The fare 
was exquisite; and the guests, and the Prince him- 
self, often aided the cooks in the preparation of it; 
and during the sittings, the characters of every one, 
their own acquaintances, the ministry as well as 
others, were discussed with fearful license. They 
drank much, and of the best vintages ; they inflamed 
themselves; poured forth obscenities at the pitch 
of their voices and impieties to an equal degree ; and, 
when satisfied with riot, and far gone in intoxica- 
tion, they retired to sleep." 

With such an example in high places, continued 
for nearly a decade, it is not surprising that the tone 



The Salons 197 

of literary and social life in Paris underwent a 
marked change. The cult of the precieuse and all 
that it represented became the theme of relentless 
ridicule. Every refinement of life which had been 
an article of faith in the first salon was more hon- 
oured in the breach than the observance, and that 
reversal of the old order was accompanied by such 
a questioning of every accepted doctrine of faith 
and government as made the French Eevolution in- 
evitable. 

Of course this spirit of license in thought and 
conduct re-acted upon the salons of Paris beside 
making its influence felt in the literary taverns and 
cafes. So far as the Regent himself was concerned, 
however, it must be recorded to his credit that he 
did not allow his mistresses to interfere in matters 
of state. This was soon discovered by Claudine de 
Tencin, who arrived in Paris shortly before the 
Duke of Orleans took up the reins of government. 
Educated in a convent and condemned by her father 
to the life of the cloister, that pleasure-loving 
woman found the religious life intolerable, and she 
so laid her plans and so shocked her superiors that 
at length she was given liberty to proceed to the 
capital. Once in Paris the quasi-nun speedily be- 
came the centre of a group of wits and roues, and in 
due time could count the Regent himself among the 
victims of her charms. That liaison, however, was 
of brief duration, for Orleans quickly ended the con- 



198, Old Paris 

nection when his mistress attempted to use her posi- 
tion for political ends. 

Two years after her arrival in Paris Mme. de 
Tencin gave birth to a son, the issue of an amour 
with the Chevalier Destouches, who, the day after 
his birth, was abandoned on the steps of a church, 
to be adopted by a glazier and grow up into the 
famous philosopher d'Alembert. Another of her 
amours had a still more tragic issue, for when her 
lover La Fresnay discovered that he did not possess 
a monopoly of her favours he committed suicide in 
her presence. These experiences appear to have 
had a sobering effect, and Mme. de Tencin then con- 
ceived the idea of conducting a more reputable 
salon, to which she was able to attract Fontenelle 
and Montesquieu among her own countrymen and 
Chesterfield and Bolingbroke among Englishmen. 
That salon, indeed, became one of the most influen- 
tial literary centres of Paris, with a strong tendency, 
as may be imagined from the character of its mis- 
tress, in favour of freedom of thought. And Mme. 
de Tencin was under no delusions as to what would 
be. the issue of the unrestrained discussions over 
which she presided, '^ Unless God visibly inter- 
feres," she declared, ''it is impossible that the 
siate should not fall to pieces." She could foresee 
the issue of such attacks upon the existing order of 
things as those contained in the writings of Mon- 
tesquieu, whose '' Esprit des Lois " she thought so 




JEAN BAPTISTE LE ROND D'ALEMBERT. 



The Salons 199 

highly of, however, that she never wearied in her 
praise of the book and purchased many copies for 
distribution among her friends. 

Animated discussion was the chief attraction of 
Mme. de Tencin's salon, as may be inferred from 
Marmontel's record of a gathering he attended. " I 
soon perceived," he wrote, " that the guests came 
there prepared to play their parts, and that their 
wish to shine did not always leave the conversation 
free to follow its easy and natural course. Every 
one tried to seize quickly and on the wing the mo- 
ment to bring in his word, his story, his maxim, or 
to add his dash of light and sparkling wit; and, in 
order to do this opportunely, it was often rather 
far-fetched. ' ' 

Later in the eighteenth century many of the salons 
in Paris became distinguished for their empty and 
frivolous amusements. They were the home of dan- 
dyism and idle scandal. The talk was commonplace 
or ill-natured; the occupations most affected were 
childish or effeminate. Pouisinet's comedy, ^' La 
Soiree a la Mode/' gives a satirical picture of the 
lackadaisical manners of the young men of the 
period. One scene depicted two maidens, Ismene 
and Cidalise, in a typical salon and represented 
them taking to embroidery and flounce trimming 
because they were tired of the game they had been 
playing and had exhausted all their scandal. At this 
juncture a lackey announces Monsieur le Marquis, 



200 Old Paris 

who, on entering, exclaims: '' How delighted I am 
to find you at home, ladies ! And what lovely work ! 
How beautifully grouped those flowers are! And 
how even the threads of this embroidery seem to 
be! It is the work of the Graces and the fairies, 
or rather of you ! ' ' And then the visitor produces 
his own needles, and, after helping Cidalise with her 
embroidery, goes to the assistance of Ismene and 
her flounce. 

Sometimes the fad of the hour made the cutting 
out of pictures the fashionable amusement, and then 
all the guests of these trivial salons tried to out- 
rival each other in the art of using a pair of scis- 
sors, or competed for supremacy in pasting the pic- 
tures on screens, lampshades and boxes. Anon the 
fashion would veer to the making of charades and 
word-puzzles, and when these and similar futilities 
failed it became the mode for the salonites to vie 
with each other as to who could boast of the most 
severe attack of the ' ' vapours, ' ' an imaginary mal- 
ady of the unemployed which appears to have an- 
ticipated the modern complaint of '' nerves.'* 

But it must not be inferred that all the salons had 
deteriorated to such nugacity. Perhaps, indeed, the 
male embroiderers and the picture-pasters, and the 
victims of " vapours " are hardly worth remem- 
brance in the history of the salon save as furnishing 
additional examples of that weakness for imitation 
which always seems to characterize the idle rich. 



The Salons 201 

The more serious traditions of the salon, then, were 
being continued at the same period by many famous 
women, such as Madame Geotfrin, Madame du Def- 
fand, Madame d'Epinay, Julie de Lespinasse, and 
others. 

Two of those women, the first and the last, served 
a notable apprenticeship in the salons of others be- 
fore setting up a coterie of their own. Mme. Geof- 
frin received her training as the assistant of the 
notorious Mme. Tencin, who, according to Horace 
Walpole, advised her " never to refuse any man; 
for, though nine in ten should not care a farthing 
for you, the tenth may live to be a useful friend.'* 
By the time Walpole met Mme. Geoffrin in Paris 
in 1766 her position as the leader of her own salon, 
— which met in a mansion on the Rue St. Honore 
still standing, — was firmly established, and conse- 
quently his sketch of her represents her when at 
the height of her influence. She was, he wrote, ' ' an 
extraordinary woman, with more commonsense 
than I almost ever met with. Great quickness in 
observing characters, penetration in going to the 
bottom of them, and a pencil that never fails in a 
likeness — seldom a favourable one. She exacts 
and preserves, spite of her birth and their nonsen- 
sical prejudices about nobility, great court and at- 
tention. This she acquires by a thousand little arts 
and offices of friendship." 

A more concise and yet exhaustive characteriza- 



202 Old Paris 

tion of Mme. Geoffrin and her salon cannot be imag- 
ined. She was of lowly birth but had married a 
wealthy manufacturer ; her education was so scanty 
that when one of her friends proposed dedicating a 
grammar to her she ejaculated, " To me? Dedicate 
a grammar to me ! Why, I don't even know how to 
spell." She had, however, remarkable gifts as a 
hostess, had learned much in Mme. de Tencin's 
salon, and was ambitious. Those qualities enabled 
her to conduct a salon which Sainte-Beuve praised 
as the most complete and best organized of the 
period and worthy of comparison with the Hotel de 
Rambouillet. It was a dual salon ; the Monday din- 
ners were restricted to artists, the Wednesday din- 
ners to men of letters. Hence it was more cosmo- 
politan than any of its predecessors, and seems to 
have been one of the first to extend its hospitality 
to distinguished foreigners. Mme. Geoffrin could 
boast, too, that her followers included the most 
notable men of her day, such as Fontenelle, Voltaire, 
Montesquieu, Grimm, Helvetius, Marivaux, Mairan, 
Marmontel, Hume, and Gibbon. Given such guests, 
the trend of the conversation may easily be divined ; 
it was thoroughly typical of the questioning spirit 
of the age and wholly in harmony with those dis- 
rupting discussions which were going on in the Cafe 
Procope and other public haunts of the encyclopae- 
dists. 
Much the same atmosphere, plus a scrupulous re- 



The Salons 203 

gard for the graces and refinements which were 
second nature to the old noblesse, prevailed in the 
salon of Mme. du Deffand. That remarkable 
woman, without doing violence to the traditions of 
her order, was as hospitable to new ideas as the 
bourgeoise Mme. Geoffrin. Her tendency towards 
scepticism dated from the convent days of her girl- 
hood. She could not esteem as sacred a doll which 
she had first known as a mere fashion doll because 
it had been re-dressed to represent the infant Jesus ; 
and when a week's solitary confinement sustained on 
bread and water failed to give her the desired illu- 
sion she protested, '' It does not depend upon me 
to believe or disbelieve." She never changed, for 
on her death-bed she implored that she might be 
spared all questions and reasons and sermons. 

Perhaps, then, a certain cynicism was the pre- 
dominant note of the discussions which took place 
in that old mansion which yet stands on the Rue des 
Quatre-Fils in the once fashionable Quartier du 
Marais. And yet Mme. du Deffand, for all her ques- 
tioning spirit and her sad disillusionment in life, was 
not deficient in kindliness. And that she had a per- 
sonality of rare charm is beyond question. Montes- 
quieu affirmed that he loved her with all his heart; 
Voltaire, too, declared ^' all that I can do is to love 
you with all my heart, as I have done for about fifty 
years ; ' ' and even Horace Walpole, although he did 
not make her acquaintance until she was very old 



204 Old Paris 

and stone blind, developed for Mme. du Deffand an 
affection such as no other woman inspired him with. 
' ' My dear old friend, ' ' he called her ; she felt, he 
said, no difference between the spirits of twenty- 
three and seventy-three. " She makes songs," he 
added, '' sings them, remembers all that ever were 
made ; and having lived from the most agreeable to 
the most reasoning age, has all that was amiable in 
the last, all that is sensible in this, without the van- 
ity of the former, or the pedant impertinence of the 
latter." She may have hated the philosophers, as 
Walpole asserted, but that aversion was probably 
due to their manners or to their adhesion to Mme. 
Geoffrin's salon, for she was not innocent of the 
feminine weakness of jealousy. 

Besides, Mme. du Deffand could not forget that 
some of those philosophers were the frequenters of 
Julie de Lespinasse's salon and that the mistress 
of that coterie had once been her own assistant. 
Much sentiment has been expended in bewailing the 
sad fate of Mile, de Lespinasse, but no convincing 
apology has ever been offered of her conduct 
towards the woman who gave her a home in Paris. 
She was the natural daughter of Mme. du Deffand 's 
brother but seems to have been treated with none 
the less consideration on that account. '' Come," 
Mme. du Deffand wrote, " come to be the happiness 
and consolation of my life." All she asked from 
her protege was that she should be " without de- 



The Salons 205 

ceit." But that was exactly the quality in which 
she failed. As Mme. du Deffand suffered from in- 
somnia, she had acquired the habit of not rising until 
shortly before six o'clock, the hour at which she 
received, but Mile, de Lespinasse prepared herself 
to welcome the guests an hour earlier and encour- 
aged their attendance in her own room prior to the 
set gathering in another part of the mansion. As 
she had the advantage of youth, for she was but 
twenty- two as compared with her patron's fifty- 
seven years, and was, besides, attractive without 
being beautiful, and an accomplished hostess, the 
sequel may be imagined. Many of the guests, and 
notably d'Alembert, the favourite of Mme. du Def- 
fand and who owed so much to her influence, grew 
into the habit of holding a preliminary salon in 
Mile, de Lespinasse 's apartment, and as this con- 
tinued for some years it may, perhaps, have been 
natural that the joint-offenders should make com- 
mon cause with Mile, de Lespinasse when the deceit 
was discovered and she was obliged to seek a home 
elsewhere. Such, then, was the origin of Mile, de 
Lespinasse 's salon in the Eue St. Dominique, to 
which many of Mme. du Deffand 's followers de- 
serted. 

Perhaps, however, there was no salon of the late 
eighteenth century in which the radical thinkers 
and writers were so much at home as in that of 
Mme. d'Epinay, who, it will be recalled, established 



206 Old Paris 

Rousseau at the famous hermitage and lived to re- 
gret her generosity. She found more steadfast 
friendship in Voltaire and Grimm and Diderot, and 
was sufficiently discerning to foresee what the re- 
sults of their teaching would be. Unless, she proph- 
esied, some radical alterations were made in the 
constitution of the nation, ' ' the knowledge acquired 
by the people must sooner or later produce revolu- 
tion. ' ' That prevision sums up the predominant in- 
fluence of the salon in the second half of the eight- 
eenth century ; and when it is remembered that the 
discussions presided over by Mme. d'Epinay, Mme. 
Geoff rin, and Mile, de Lespinasse dealt with sub- 
jects more removed every year from the trifling 
questions which had exercised the followers of the 
Marquise de Rambouillet, it will not seem strange 
that with the near approach of the Revolution the 
functions of the salon were usurped by the club. 




MME. D EPINAY. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CLUBS 

As with the cafe, Paris may be said to have copied 
the club from London, but at a much longer interval. 
The tardiness with which the latter institution was 
initiated was probably due to two causes : first, the 
uniquity of the cafe or literary tavern in the French 
capital, and, secondly, the prevalence of the salon. 

By the last quarter of the seventeenth century 
many of the coffee-houses of London had become the 
recognized resorts of extreme politicians, and their 
suppression was advocated on the plea that they 
were the meeting-places of idle men who arraigned 
*' the judgments and discretions of their governors, 
censured all their actions, and insinuated into the 
people a prejudice against them." On that account 
even the easy-going Charles II was prevailed upon 
to issue a proclamation commanding the closing of 
such rendezvous of sedition, which proclamation, 
however, was rescinded almost as soon as issued. 
Hence the London coffee-houses continued to flour- 
ish as political clubs, and in the early decades of 
the eighteenth century were a power with which 
statesmen had to reckon. 

All this goes far to explain the action of Henry 

207 



208 Old Paris 

Saint-Jotin, otherwise Viscount Bolingbroke, to 
which allusion was made in the opening sentences 
of the previous chapter. Not only was he, as an 
English politician, familiar with the idea of the 
club and conversant with its value as a weapon for 
intrigue and the dissemination of ideas, but he was 
also himself a club-founder. As Swift's " Journal 
to Stella " shows, Bolingbroke established the 
Brothers Club in London in the summer of 1711, one 
end of which was " to reward deserving persons 
with our interest and recommendation." That 
coterie, however, speedily took a political bent with 
a strong inclination to conviviality. A¥hen, then, 
the failure of his political fortunes prompted Bol- 
ingbroke to remove to Paris, it was but natural that 
he should have attempted to create in the French 
capital a replica of that club which he had estab- 
lished in London. 

Apparently he had little difficulty in carrying his 
scheme into execution. One of his friends was Pres- 
ident Henault, and he agreed to allow the mezzanine 
of his house to be used as a meeting-place, which 
accounts for the club being named the Entre sol. 
Two other notable members were the Abbe Alary 
and the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, and the main topics 
of discussion were the political questions of the day, 
which were debated with a leaning towards innova- 
tion and in a spirit keenly critical of the abuses in 
the state. The Abbe de Saint-Pierre was the most 



The Clubs 209 

singular and original member of the club; now he 
would expound his radical views as to how titled 
aristocrats might render useful service to the na- 
tion, and on another occasion he, anticipating the 
humanitarianism of The Hague Conference, enter- 
tained his fellow members with an exposition of his 
scheme to bring about perpetual peace. The latter 
project he embodied in his book, '' Projet de Paix 
Perpetuelle, " a work which prompted a Dutch inn- 
keeper to christen his hostelry ^' The Perpetual 
Peace, ' ' and explain the name by a signboard which 
depicted a churchyard thickly strewn with graves. 
But other reforms not so visionary were debated at 
the Entre sol Club, and when this became known to 
Cardinal Fleury he intimated in a quiet but none the 
less resolute manner that its meetings had better 
cease. And so the first political and semi-literary 
club of Paris came to an end in 1731 after a brief 
existence of two or three years. 

Half a century later, however, the conditions had 
changed. The encyclopaedists and the salons had 
done their work. Besides, the increasing inter- 
course between London and Paris had done much to 
familiarize Frenchmen with the idea of the club and 
its social and political possibilities. That the club 
in the French capital assumed at the first a political 
character may be accounted for by the nature of 
the times. According to the testimony of the actor 
Fleury, clubs of various kinds had been established 



210 Old Paris 

in Paris several years prior to the outbreak of the 
Revolution but were transformed by that event into 
purely political reunions. '' What delightful 
things, ' ' wrote the comedian in his memoirs, ' ' were 
those clubs at their commencement! The term was 
new to French ears, and our ladies loved to pro- 
nounce it because it was foreign. The meetings 
themselves too were new and foreign, and for that 
reason they were eagerly adopted. Clubs became 
quite the rage, and they gave renewed brilliancy to 
our salons, whose lustre was beginning to be 
dimmed. They furnished new winter-quarters for 
fashionable conversation, which was dying of de- 
cline — not for want of aliment, but because its tone, 
which had been adopted under Louis XIV, had lasted 
through three whole reigns. It therefore required 
renovation. Yet, in changing the form of things, 
there is always a risk of changing their nature ; and 
so it happened, that Parisian conversation, that 
lively queen of the drawing-room, was soon con- 
verted into a formal prude, who talked of nothing but 
principles, abuses, and constitutions. From that 
moment the character of the club was changed; it 
aimed at constituting itself a sort of tribunal of 
public opinion, and to justify this pretension, it en- 
listed under its banners that spirit of opposition 
which is innate with the Parisians." 

While it was natural for the pleasure-loving actor 
to regret that the early clubs of Paris were so soon' 



The Clubs 211 

perverted to political uses, the student of history 
may find some compensation in the fact that that 
divergence from the purely social idea of the club 
enriched the history of that institution by some of 
its most remarkable chapters. 

Not counting the abortive experiment of Boling- 
broke, it seems that the earliest political club of 
Paris was that established about 1782 to further the 
interests of the Orleans family and especially the 
ambitions of the Duke himself, the notorious Phi- 
lippe Egalite. This club, however, notwithstanding 
that its members included Mirabeau and Sieyes, was 
not of long endurance, and as its gatherings were 
secret little is known of its history. 

Secrecy and poverty of annals cannot be charged 
against the famous Jacobins Club save with refer- 
ence to the early stages of its history when it was 
known as the Breton Club. That society, as its 
name suggests, was founded by those deputies from 
Brittany who represented the determination of that 
province to continue holding its own parliament 
despite the royal edict suspending all such legisla- 
tures. The Bretons preferred the old order of 
things, and hence at the outset the club into which 
they formed themselves claimed the title of " the 
Friends of the Constitution." Their early pro- 
ceedings are obscure, for the members were pledged 
by a solemn oath not to divulge what transpired at 
their meetings. 



212 Old Paris 

Only for a brief season was the organization 
known as the Breton Clnb. When the National As- 
sembly was removed from Versailles to Paris in 
October, 1789, the club secured possession of the 
old Jacobins, or Dominican, monastery on the Eue 
St. Honore, and thus acquired the name by which 
it is famous. Already its members included Mira- 
beau, Sieyes, Barnave, Petion, the two Lameths, sev- 
eral liberal aristocrats, and Robespierre, who were 
later joined by St. Just, Danton, and Marat. 

Early the following year a constitution was 
adopted. It provided for four secretaries, a treas- 
urer, committees to control the administration and 
report on candidates for membership, and a presi- 
dent whose term of office was restricted to one 
month. The objects of the club were also defined. 
They were to include preliminary discussion of such 
matters as were likely to be brought before the Na- 
tional Assembly, support to all action tending to 
strengthen the constitution in harmony with legal 
authority such as did not clash with '' the rights of 
man," and affiliation with other societies of a kin- 
dred nature. At first, then, strange as it may seem 
in the light of its subsequent history, the Jacobins 
Club was not committed to extreme measures. And 
admission to its membership was by no means easy. 
For one thing, the subscription was very high, and 
that restricted its constituency to men of wealth or 
well to do bourgeois such as Michel Gerard, that 



The Clubs 213 

peasant proprietor whose mother wit and country 
garb distinguished him from the rank and file. 
Gerard was exceedingly frank in his remarks. 
" When I first sat among you," he blurted out one 
day, '' I heard so many beautiful speeches that I 
might have believed myself in heaven, had there not 
been so many lawyers present." And in one high- 
flown discussion he intervened with, " we have be- 
come involved in a rigmarole about ' the Rights of 
Man ' of which I understand mighty little save that 
it is worth nothing." But Gerard did more than 
enliven the discussions of the Jacobins Club ; he set 
the fashion; for his plaited hair and rural waist- 
coat became in time the mode among all ultra- 
Jacobins. 

Perhaps the most suggestive thing in the history 
of the Jacobins Club is that while at the start its 
meetings were held in the old refectory of the mon- 
astery and then in the library, at last it became 
necessary to change the venue to the more spa- 
cious church. Those successive changes of meeting- 
place are not only eloquent of a growth in member- 
ship but also of a transformation in the spirit of 
the club. Robespierre and the more violent mem- 
bers, in short, gradually asserted themselves and 
acquired the control of the organization. 

By far the most important outcome of the Robes- 
pierre ascendency was the resolve to admit the pub- 
lic to the debates of the club. This innovation dated 



214 Old Paris 

from October, 1791, and had the inevitable result. 
The discussions attracted the worst elements of the 
population, degraded women and men of the lowest 
and even criminal type, such an audience, in fact, as 
would reserve its loudest plaudits for the most revo- 
lutionary sentiments. Of course this re-acted upon 
the speakers, most of whom had no higher ambition 
than to pose as a popular demagogue. 

Unique, then, in the annals of clubdom were the 
scenes which transpired in that ancient church on 
the Rue St. Honore. A picture has survived of the 
setting of those gatherings, penned by one who was 
an eye-witness. ' ' The nave of the Jacobins Church 
is changed into a vast Circus, the seats of which 
mount up circularly like an amphitheatre to the very 
groin of the domed roof. A high Pyramid of black 
marble, built against one of the walls, which was 
formerly a funeral monument, has alone been left 
standing: it now serves as a back to the Office- 
bearers' Bureau. Here on an elevated platform sit 
President and Secretaries, behind and above them 
the white busts of Mirabeau, of Franklin, and vari- 
ous others, nay finally of Marat. Facing this is the 
Tribune, raised till it is midway between floor and 
groin of the dome, so that the speaker's voice may 
be in the centre. ' ' 

Other details require to be added to that picture. 
On the walls hung those ancient implements of tor- 
ture which recalled the palmy days of the Inquisi- 




MAXIMILIEN MARIE ISIDORE ROBESPIERRE. 



The Clubs 215 

tion, here and there were symbols of anarchism and 
groups of tricolour flags, and elsewhere, most sig- 
nificant of all, were displayed garland-crowned por- 
traits of Jacques Clement and Ravaillac, each in- 
scribed with the legend: '' He was fortunate; he 
killed a king." Given such a theatre, and remem- 
bering the character of the audience and the violent 
nature of the speeches addressed to it, it is not sur- 
prising to learn that the tumult was often so great 
that muskets had to be fired to secure temporary 
silence. The revolutionary spirit of the club, too, 
was well illustrated by the questions put to candi- 
dates for membership, questions which included 
" What have you done to be hanged if the ancient 
regime is restored? " And others of a like signifi- 
cant nature. 

By various circumstances, which it is not neces- 
sary to describe, the Jacobins Club at length became 
the chief power in Paris. To incur the displeasure 
of its leaders meant certain death. In the hands of 
Robespierre it became the chief engine of the Ter- 
ror. Consequently it may easily be imagined how 
close a surveillance it exercised over its members 
and how careful those members were to avoid any 
action which might lay them open to suspicion. 

Nothing, perhaps, better illustrates the despotic 
power of the club than an incident which took place 
at one of its meetings in the October of 1793. One 
of its most conspicuous members was Francois 



216 Old Paris 

Chabot, who had been a Franciscan friar but had 
availed himself of the Revolution to renounce his 
religious vows in favour of the more congenial occu- 
pation of political leadership. One of Chabot 's 
peculiarities was his affectation of a sansculotte 
garb, a rough jacket which left his neck and chest 
uncovered and knee-breeches of coarse material, a 
device which may have been adopted to detract at- 
tention from the zeal with which he demonstrated 
how thoroughly he had broken his monkish vow of 
chastity. All this was, of course, in strict harmony 
with pure Jacobinism; no member of the club could 
possibly go too far in rebelling against authority 
and moral conventions. But the fiction of respect 
for poverty had to be kept up at all costs. The 
leaders and friends of " the people " had to take 
good care that their indulgences in the flesh-pots of 
the aristocrats were carefully hidden from their 
sansculotte followers. 

And that necessity landed Chabot in a difficulty. 
It became known in October, 1793, that he was en- 
gaged to be married, and to be married, too, to a 
woman who was not only a foreigner and an aris- 
tocrat but also possessed a fortune of two or three 
hundred thousand francs. The news got abroad 
among the members of the Jacobins Club, creating 
ugly murmurs and bitter reflections on the back- 
sliding of the bridegroom-elect, and Chabot realized 
that he must make a supreme effort to avert sus- 



The Clubs 217 

picion. He attired himself for the occasion with 
more than usual care, swathing his head in a dirty 
handkerchief, selecting his most tattered jacket and 
nether garments, and thrusting his feet into a pair 
of rough clogs stuffed with straw. He even appears 
to have smeared his face and neck and hands with 
an extra layer of dirt. 

Such was the appearance of Chabot, then, filthy 
and clad in rags, when he rose in the Jacobins hall 
on that October night. 

" I take this opportunity," he said, '' of inform- 
ing the club that I am about to marry. Every one 
knows that I have been a priest, and even a Fran- 
ciscan; I must therefore give you the motives that 
led to my resolve. As a legislator, I deemed it my 
duty to set an example of every virtue. I am re- 
proached with being too fond of women. In allying 
myself to one in accordance with the law, a step 
which I have long desired to take, am I not doing 
my best to silence that calumny? Three weeks ago 
I was unaquainted with the woman I am about to 
marry. Brought up, according to the custom of her 
country, in absolute retirement, she had never come 
into contact with strangers. I was therefore not in 
love with her, and even now I am in love only with 
her virtue, her talents, and the purity of her Repub- 
licanism; in the same way she herself feels at- 
tracted towards me only by the repute of my patri- 
otism. I had not the slightest intention of propos- 



218 Old Paris 

ing to her, but went to one of her brothers, Junius 
Frey — an estimable man of letters, and well known 
by two very patriotic works — to ask her hand for 
one of my relations. ' To you, citizen, and to you 
alone, will I give her, ' said Junius Frey. I told him 
that the whole of my income amounted to seven hun- 
dred francs, and that I gave even that up to my 
father and mother. ' No matter,' he replied; ' we 
give her to you for your own sake, and not for your 
fortune.' I have been calumniated in this matter, 
citizens ; it has been said that I had money, since I 
married so well. I will read you my marriage con- 
tract, and from this you will learn that the whole 
of my fortune consists of six thousand francs." 

That touching idyl of pure patriotism moved the 
Jacobins almost to tears, especially when the diffi- 
dent bridegroom-elect concluded by asking the club 
to send a deputation to his wedding and the banquet 
that was to follow the ceremony. True, one cynical 
member did get on his feet and call attention to the 
nationality of the bride and the wealth of her dower, 
but his proposal that no deputation be appointed 
was voted down. The prospect of a sumptuous feast 
was too tempting a bait to be resisted. And so the 
reluctant Chabot was duly wedded to his ' ' patri- 
otic " bride, but seven months later that bride be- 
came a widow by favour of the guillotine. Chabot 
used his wife's wealth in bribery for political ends 
and quickly paid the penalty. 



The Clubs 219 

While it is well known that the Jacobins Club had 
branches all over France it is not usually remem- 
bered that it also had a female auxiliary in Paris it- 
self. There was, in fact, a female Jacobins Club, 
which met in the old library beneath the hall in which 
Chabot narrated his patriotic love-story. Accord- 
ing to the testimony of eye-witnesses, the proceed- 
ings there were as turbulent as in the assembly 
above, and the speeches of the woman orators as 
inflammatory as those of the male Jacobins. Nay, 
those women Jacobins did more than orate; when 
bread and soap became scarce they marched in depu- 
tation to the Convention, and, failing to secure sat- 
isfaction there, next bore their full share in the loot- 
ing of the shops. 

But although the Jacobins Club was the most pop- 
ular and powerful organization of its kind at the 
time of the Eevolution, it must not be imagined it 
had the field all to itself. When the Parisian takes 
up a new idea he does so with enthusiasm. As the 
actor Fleury said, once the idea was adopted clubs 
became the rage of the city. There was, indeed, an 
epidemic of what one letter-writer described as 
'' Clubocatrie. " Another reported, ^' Clubs abound 
in every street, and almost in every hovel in Paris. ' ' 
As Carlyle said, ^' In such a France gregarious Re- 
unions will needs multiply, intensify; French Life 
will step out of doors, and, from domestic, become a 
public Club Life. Old Clubs, which already germi- 



220 Old Paris 

nated, grow and flourish; new everywhere bud 
forth." 

Among those new societies several of the most 
notable were founded in protest against the Jaco- 
bins Club. Such, for example, was the moving cause 
which called into existence the Qiiatre-Vingt-Neuf, 
the Enragees, Le Monarchique, the Cordeliers, and 
the Feuillants. But the nature of the protest was 
not the same in each case. With the club of 1789 
and the Feuillants, for example, the impelling mo- 
tive was conservatism and a desire to thwart the 
extreme measures of the Jacobins ; with the Corde- 
liers the motive was quite the opposite, for the men 
who founded that club thought the Jacobins too 
lukewarm and moderate. 

^It was in May, 1790, that the Cordeliers Club 
was established, its moving spirits being Danton, 
and Desmoulins, and Marat. As was the case with 
the Jacobins, it took its name from its meeting-place, 
which had been the church of the monastery of the 
Cordeliers, otherwise the Grey Friars, a building 
which still exists as the Dupuytren Museum. Even 
when the club removed to a hall on the Rue Dauphin 
it still retained its monastic name. 

Started with the avowed determination to watch 
the government, no matter what form the govern- 
ment might take, the club adopted an open eye as its 
emblem, and all through its existence its leaders 
were distinguished for the violence of their ora- 



The Clubs 221 

tions. Naturally, then, its constitution was more 
democratic than that of any other revolutionary 
club; membership was granted on easy terms and 
for a small fee, and the discussions were thrown 
open to all. The most vivid memories of the club 
cluster around the person of Marat, whose printing- 
press was stored in the vaults of the church in 
which he was one of the most impassioned orators. 
That church, too, was to witness Marat's theatrical 
apotheosis. For when the knife of Charlotte Cor- 
day had accomplished its beneficient purpose, and 
its victim had been buried with tawdry pomp in 
the garden of the Grey Friars Monastery, Marat's 
heart, duly inurned, was swung by a long chain 
from the roof of the church which had so often 
echoed to his violent speeches. That ceremony was 
concluded with an apostrophe by the President of 
the club. ' ' Precious and divine remains ! " he ex- 
claimed. '' Shall our souls be perjured? You de- 
mand to be revenged, and your assassins still live! 
Arise, Grey Friars! It is time. Let us avenge 
Marat and console the heart of weeping France." 

Perhaps the dramatic orator might have wept for 
himself and the other leaders of the Cordeliers 
could he have foreseen that nine months later the 
guillotine was to be the reward of their revolution- 
ary zeal. 

Briefer were the annals and less theatrical the 
extinction of the Feuillants Club. The men who 



222 Old Paris 

founded it were friends of liberty but not of license ; 
they were, indeed, members of the Jacobins Club 
up to the day that society adopted a petition in fa- 
vour of the deposition of the King. Convinced that 
such an extreme measure would be the beginning of 
lawlessness, they opposed the petition to the ut- 
most, and when it was adopted despite their pro- 
tests they withdrew from the Jacobins and founded 
a club of their own. It took its name of the Feuil- 
lants from the fact that another monastery on the 
Eue St. Honore, that of the Feuillants, was selected 
as its chief meeting-place. The leading members 
included Barnave, Duport, the Lameths, Lavoisier, 
and Chenier, and for a time it seemed as though the 
club would quickly prove a formidable rival to the 
Jacobins. But the high subscription fee of four 
louis plus a charge of six livres for attendance, soon 
checked the influx of new adherents, while the luxu- 
rious manner in which the club premises were fitted 
up and the tendency to high living indulged by the 
members were warning beacons to those astute poli- 
ticians who relied upon the masses for their audi- 
ence. 

Besides, there was the opposition of the Jacobins 
to be reckoned with. That opposition at length took 
the form most dreaded by the Parisian — ridicule. 
One evening, then, when the Feuillants were in ses- 
sion, the gallery of their meeting-place was sud- 
denly invaded by a band of street ruffians and pros- 



The Clubs 223 

titutes, who, under the leadership of a zealous Jaco- 
bin, at once began to interrupt the proceedings by 
irrelevant shouts and cat-calls. This, as a member 
of the club testified, might have been endured and 
the intruders even driven from the hall, had not one 
of the disturbers broken out into an imitation of 
cock-crowing as a delicate compliment to that leader 
of the Feuillants who edited a paper called " The 
Crowing of the Cock." Insults were bad enough, 
** but before this piece of ridicule we could only 
take refuge in flight. It was raining," this apologist 
added, '' and as many of the Jacobins were moving 
about in the lobby with their umbrellas under their 
arms and inciting the mob to create further disturb- 
ances, a rumour was set afloat in Paris next day that 
we had been driven out at the point of the um- 
brella." 

Such tactics having proved so successful, they 
were naturally repeated. The Jacobin emissaries 
grew even bolder, for when the Feuillants next as- 
sembled in their hall they found their tribune occu- 
pied by an impudent street urchin and h^ad not the 
pluck to eject him before first calling in the aid of 
the police. Their apologist may declare that the 
club was overthrown by the '' scum of the pave- 
ment " and " abandoned women," but the truer ver- 
dict is that it failed through lack of manhood among 
its members. 

One by one the Jacobins, then, got rid of all their 



224 Old Paris 

rivals, some by devious methods, others by forcible 
suppression, until at length the club once more had 
the political field to itself. But as by that time it 
was irrevocably committed to desperate measures 
and had stained its annals by the bloodshedding of 
the Eeign of Terror its own doom was not to be long 
delayed. The fall of Eobespierre resulted in the 
closing of the club, and, although several attempts 
were made to revive it, by November, 1794, it had 
ended its chequered career. Such of its sympathi- 
zers who dared to make their appearance in the cafes 
were immediately assailed by the jeunesse doree 
and chased out into the streets. And with the pass- 
ing of the Jacobins it became possible for the idea 
of the club to play a less disturbing part in the life 
of Paris. 

There was one variety of the club, however, which 
was common in the French capital long before the 
Revolution, namely, the gambling-house. No na- 
tion, and, least of all, France, has needed to wait 
upon another for an example in the matter of games 
of chance, though some races have been more for- 
ward than others in catering for th<e deep-rooted 
passion for gambling. In making his Persian^ ob- 
servers comment upon the prevalence of gaming in 
Paris it is suggestive that Montesquieu does not im- 
ply that there were specific clubs in existence for 
that purpose in 1714; all he concerns himself with 
is to note how widespread the evil was and to affirm 



The Clubs 225 

that to be a gamester admitted a man, without ex- 
amination, " to the rank of a gentleman." When 
he wrote man, he meant woman, too ; for he described 
the women of Paris as slaves to the passion of play, 
the last device to complete that ruin of their hus- 
bands which they began by extravagance and con- 
tinued by gallantry. 

^By the time Horace "Walpole paid his first visit 
to Paris a quarter of a century later gambling clubs 
of a particularly tempting nature were plentiful. 
*' You would not easily guess their notions of hon- 
our," he wrote of the Parisians: " I'll tell you one: 
it is very dishonourable for any gentleman not to be 
in the army, or in the king's service as they call it, 
and it is no dishonour to keep public gaming-houses : 
there are at least one hundred and fifty people of 
the first quality in Paris who live by it. You may 
go into their houses at all hours of the night, and 
find hazard, faro, etc. The men who keep the haz- 
ard-table at the Duke of Gesvres' pay him twelve 
guineas each night for the privilege. Even the prin- 
cesses of the blood are dirty enough to have shares 
in the banks kept at their houses." 

With such examples in high places, it is not sur- 
prising that the gambling club became ubiquitous 
in Paris. It was not confined to the ancestral man- 
sions of nobles or princesses, but was to be found 
in more plebeian buildings specially devoted to 
games of chance. One of the most famous of these 



226 Old Paris 

was the palatial Frascati edifice, which stood at the 
corner of the Boulevard Montmartre and the Eue 
Vivienne ; another was situated in the Palais Royal ; 
while a third, the Circle des Strangers, for a time 
outrivalled Frascati 's as the fashionable resort of 
the city. 

When Emerson paid his first visit to Paris in 1833 
the Frascati Club was already notorious as the most 
noted gambling resort of the city, and was then es- 
tablished in a handsome house on the Rue Richelieu. 
The philosopher of Concord included it in his sight- 
seeing and duly recorded his experience in his jour- 
nal. '' Several servants in livery were waiting in 
the hall, who took our hats on entering, and we 
passed at once into the suite of rooms in all of- 
which play was going on. The most perfect deco- 
rum and civility prevailed, the table was covered 
with little piles of napoleons which seemed to change 
masters very rapidly, but scarce a word was spoken. 
Servants carry about lemonade, etc., but no heating 
liquor. The house, I was told, is always one party 
in the game. Several women were present, but many 
of the company seemed to be mere spectators like 
ourselves. After walking round the tables, we re- 
turned to the hall, gave the servant a franc for our 
hats, and departed. ' ' Emerson added that Frascati 
had ''grown very rich; " had he foreseen that he 
was to die insolvent he might have appended a 
philosophical moral to his little narrative. 



i'*P>f»-i;- \ 




The Clubs 227 

Many years before Emerson wandered through 
the Frascati saloons one of the most constant fre- 
quenters of the club was a certain M. de Lubsac, a 
handsome and witty officer of the royal household 
who had eclipsed all rivals for the favours of Louise 
Contat, the famous and fascinating soubrette of 
the Comedie-FranQaise. Presuming on the attach- 
ment of the actress, De Lubsac, one wild and reck- 
less night at Frascati 's, staked all the diamonds and 
jewelry of his mistress, and lost. Hence, a day or 
two later, when Mile. Contat went to her jewel-cases, 
she found them empty. This was a genuine case of 
missing diamonds, and the actress sent for the po- 
lice in hot haste. But before they arrived the guilty 
De Lubsac made a full confession, and found he had 
counted too much on the attachment of his mistress, 
for she was furious at her loss. De Lubsac now 
adopted the tone of the penitent, concluding his ex- 
pression of unutterable sorrow with the reflection, 
'^ Ah, if I only had a few louis at this moment I 
could repair everything! " To Mile. Contat 's ques- 
tion as to what he meant by such a remark, he re- 
joined that he had an instinct that luck would fa- 
vour him that night if he only had the means to put 
it to the test. Of course, Mile. Contat at once pro- 
duced a couple of louis, " the last she had in the 
world," and De Lubsac hurried off to Frascati 's to 
win back all his mistress's jewels and a considerable 
sum in addition. 



228 Old Paris 

While at Frascati's and similar clubs the only 
handicap of the gambler was the law of chance, there 
were many other haunts in Paris where his risks 
were increased by various swindling devices. The 
methods of those more or less secret clubs were re- 
vealed by a notable trial which took place in 1833, 
when four keepers of such places were indicted for 
the use of cartes hizot es yihdii is, cards which had been 
shaved at the edges to make them thinner or shorter. 
The chief witness, a young man named Sirat, ex- 
plained how he had been invited to a '' patriotic 
dinner ' ' where he would have the privilege of meet- 
ing General Dubourg, how the gathering proved to 
be a mixed affair of " luxury and poverty," how 
after the meal ecarte was introduced, and how he 
and his partner, the general, after winning a few 
francs, suddenly began to lose and finally found 
themselves responsible for the payment of some 
thousands of francs. Before leaving the venue of 
that " patriotic dinner " M. Sirat secured one of 
the packs of cards, and subsequent inquiries dis- 
closed that the master of the house had been a 
mountebank, a tooth-drawer, and a conjurer. Those 
facts, and the prepared cards, coupled with later dis- 
coveries as to the losses of some of his friends, de- 
termined him to make an effort to bring the swind- 
lers to justice. One of them, Houdaille by name, on 
being called upon for his defence, protested that he 
was being made the victim of a tissue of falsehoods, 



The Clubs 229 

that he was a respectable man who always '^ went 
to bed every night at nine o'clock " and that any 
dealings he had had with M. Sirat had been 
prompted by a desire to save from ruin a young 
man for whom he had the affection of a father! 
The court, however, was unmoved by that seductive 
story of injured innocence and self-sacrificing altru- 
ism ; M. Houdaille and his colleagues were promptly 
fined and sentenced to a year's imprisonment. 

But gambling clubs as such were not then illegal 
in Paris. They were, indeed, not only connived at 
but actually licensed by the government, and that 
they were exceedingly numerous may be inferred 
from the fact that the fees for the licenses added 
more than five million francs to the annual revenue. 

When at length public opinion had grown suffi- 
ciently sensitive to protest against the government 
recognizing and deriving profit from the gambling 
clubs of Paris, the minister in charge of the na- 
tional finances was anxious to learn how the object- 
ors proposed to make good the deficit which the 
abolition of the licenses would create. But even 
that pointed question did not avail; such lurid ac- 
counts of the crime and misery caused by the clubs 
were given in the chamber that during a debate in 
that assembly in 1836 a motion was passed in favour 
of the withdrawal of licenses and the prohibition of 
the clubs on and after the last day of the following 
year. 



230 Old Paris 

In the closing days of December, 1837, then, the 
patrons of Frascati's, the Circle des Strangers, and 
all the other licensed clubs, were not surprised to 
find posted up in all the rooms of these establish- 
ments an official notice to the effect that at mid- 
night on the thirty-first day of that month they 
would be finally closed, and that play would not be 
permitted for a single minute after the hour named. 
With that announcement the keepers of the clubs 
also displayed a notice intimating that on that last 
day the houses would be opened at nine o'clock in 
the evening instead of eleven o'clock, as had been 
the rule. 

Although the last day of December fell upon a 
Sunday, that made no difference to the thousands 
of gamblers who assembled to stake their last haz- 
ards under governmental authority. Dense crowds 
gathered at the doors to await their opening, and 
no sooner had they been unbarred than all the rooms 
were filled to overflowing and the tables piled high 
with golden coin. In fact, so vast were the crowds 
that at many clubs it became necessary to close the 
outer doors and refuse admission. Promptly at the 
hour of midnight all play ceased, and when the gam- 
blers left their haunts they found they had to face 
the jeers and jibes of the mobs which had collected 
to celebrate their discomfiture. Some of them, how- 
ever, were in a mood which made them indifferent 
to such attentions, for of not a few it is recorded 



The Clubs 231 

that their losses were so heav^ that they committed 
suicide. 

' Although, as has been shown, the Parisian was 
largely indebted to " perfidious Albion " for the 
club idea, he naturally christened his societies with 
native names. With one exception, that of the 
Jockey Club, which, though bearing the Galli2 title of 
Societe d' Encouragement, is, and always has been 
known by its English name. That is only natural in 
view of the fact that it was founded when Anglo- 
mania was the fashion. The club has had a varied 
history since it took shape in a modest building on 
the Eue du Helder — headquarters which would be 
scorned by those members who can remember no 
other home than the sumptuous edifice in which they 
are now housed on the Rue Scribe. And its members 
have been as varied as its history. Many of the ear- 
liest were patrons of the old Cafe de Paris, men 
who though " not knowing a fetlock from a pas- 
tern " eagerly welcomed an opportunity to belong 
to a colony more exclusive than that of a restaurant 
which was open to all who could pay their bills., 
The founders of the Jockey Club were, however, 
guileless enough to admit Eugene Sue as a member, 
an act of grace which they had ample cause to re- 
gret when the success of " The Mysteries of Paris " 
caused that persistent poser to put on airs. How- 
ever, they got rid of him at last under that conve- 
nient rule which enabled them to erase the name of 



232 Old Paris 

a member who was in arrears with his subscrip- 
tion. 

As Albert Vandam observed, though the Jockey 
Club of those early years was by no means the un- 
obtrusive society it has since become, its excesses 
and eccentricities were not blazoned from the house- 
tops. " A M. de Chateauvillard might take it into 
his head to play a game of billiards on horseback, 
or M. de Machado might live surrounded by a couple 
of hundred parrots if he liked; none of these fan- 
cies attracted the public's notice: M. Sue, by his 
very profession, attracted too much of it, and 
brought a great deal of it into the club itself." 
Hence his violent protest against his expulsion was 
in vain; the committee had erased his name and 
took care it was not restored. 

Previous chapters have adduced ample evidence 
that many of the taverns and cafes of old Paris de- 
rived not a little of their profit from the fact that 
they were the haunts of literary coteries, but there 
were other reunions or clubs of writers which either 
owned no allegiance to a tavern or cafe or refused 
to confine their patronage to any one establishment 
of that kind. Among these unattached clubs the first 
place is upon all accounts due to that little group of 
seven or eight men who, about the year 1629, formed 
themselves into a society for the discussion of liter- 
ary subjects. The moving spirit of that gathering 
was Valentin Conrart, the secretary of the king^s 



The Clubs 233 

council, who was a relative of Bishop Godeau. 
Whenever that prelate visited Paris he lodged in 
Conrart's house, and on such occasions several lit- 
erary men were in the habit of calling there to enjoy 
converse with the bishop. It seems highly probable 
that this was the origin of the subsequent gatherings 
in Conrart's house — gatherings at which he and 
his friends were in the habit of reading and discuss- 
ing each other's writings. Although the members 
were pledged to secrecy, the existence of the club at 
last became known to Eichelieu who soon afterwards 
offered the members his protection and the privilege 
of incorporation into a recognized society. As such 
gatherings as theirs were not legal, and as the fa- 
mous cardinal was too powerful a minister to of- 
fend, the members of the club waived their prefer- 
ence for privacy and accepted Richelieu's proposal 
with due expression of that gratitude which policy 
dictated but which they were so far from feeling. 
Such was the origin of the French Academy of 
forty immortals. As a literary club it existed little 
more than six years. 

Apart from the Academy, which is in a distinct 
category of its own, none of the literary clubs of 
Paris have ever rivalled that continuity of history 
which The Club of London has to its credit. That 
may be accounted for partly by the volatile nature 
of the French temperament, partly by the fact that 
many of the clubs have centred in a single individ- 



234 Old Paris 

ual, and partly by the consideration that not a few 
of those coteries have been formed solely for the 
purpose of exploiting some one definite and innova- 
ting idea. 

Two pertinent examples of the type of literary 
clnb which owed its existence to the fascination of a 
personality are provided by the coteries of which 
Boileau and Moliere were the centres. They had an 
almost contemporaneous existence in the latter half 
of the seventeenth century, that presided over by 
Boileau meeting in his house on the Rue du Vieux 
Colombier in the Faubourg St. Germain, and the one 
of which Moliere was the host in the dramatist's 
pleasant rural retreat at Auteuil. 

Priority of establishment probably belongs to the 
Boileau club, which is often referred to as The Four 
because its chief members were Moliere, La Fon- 
taine, Eacine, and the host, but as Chapelle and 
Peter Mignard were frequent guests it would be 
more correct to describe the coterie as Boileau 's sex- 
tette. La Fontaine placed on record a brief sketch 
of the club which will be read with interest. " Four 
friends, whose acquaintance had begun at the foot 
of Parnassus, held a sort of society, which I should 
call an Academy, if their number had been suffi- 
ciently great, and if they had had as much regard 
for the Muses as for pleasure. The first thing which 
they did was to banish from among them all rules 
of conversation, and everything which savours of 



The Clubs 235 

the academic conference. When they met, and had 
sufficiently discussed their arrangements, if chance 
threw them upon any point of science or belles- 
lettres, they profited by the occasion; it was, how- 
ever, without dwelling too long on the same sub- 
ject, flitting from one thing to another like the bees 
that meet divers sorts of flowers on their way. 
Neither envy, malice, nor cabal, had any voice 
among them. They adored the work of the ancients, 
never refused due praise to those of the moderns, 
spoke modestly of their own, and gave each other 
sincere counsel, when any one of them — which 
rarely happened — fell into the malady of the age, 
and published a book." 

Evidently the mirthful little conspiracies of which 
the famous fabulist, owing to his absence of mind 
and childlike simplicity, was the frequent object, 
were taken in as good part as they were concocted, 
for than his picture of the club nothing could sug- 
gest closer fraternity and good comradeship. La 
Fontaine, indeed, had so attractive a personality 
that no one had the heart to carry a joke against 
him beyond the innocent stage. The considerateness 
with which the genial fabulist was treated is well 
illustrated by one anecdote of the club. At one 
gathering the company included a brother of the 
host, a doctor of Sorbonne, who expatiated at great 
length upon the merits of St. Augustine. La Fon- 
taine, who had relapsed into one of his moods of 



236 Old Paris 

abstraction, seemed to listen without hearing, but 
at length roused himself sufficiently to ask the eulo- 
gist whether he thought St. Augustine had *' as 
much wit as Eabelais ? ' ' For any other interrupter 
the learned divine would probably have had a sharp 
retort, but to the gentle fabulist all he replied was, 
" Take care, Monsieur La Fontaine; you have put 
one of your stockings on wrong side outwards." 
Had the eulogist of St. Augustine been a regular 
member of the club he and La Fontaine might both 
have been called upon to pay the penalty which had 
been devised by the lively Chapelle to preserve the 
harmony of the meetings. This was the imposition 
of the task of reading aloud so many lines from 
Chapelain's inflated " Pucelle," a copy of which al- 
ways lay on the table. 

Moliere's club at Auteuil was as fraternal and 
convivial as that which met in the Rue du Vieux 
Colombier. One incident which took place there 
would seem to indicate that Boileau's attempt to 
convert Chapelle to temperance principles was 
merely a temporary aberration. On the occasion in 
question Moliere was too indisposed to act as host; 
having to keep his room, he deputed Boileau to take 
his place at the head of the table. The famous 
critic made an efficient substitute, and by the time 
the night grew late all the guests were intoxicated. 
It was at this stage that one of them started a dis- 
cussion on the evils of life and adduced as a. fine 



The Clubs 237 

axiom of wisdom the remark by an ancient writer 
to the effect that the greatest happiness was not to 
be born and the next greatest to die promptly. This 
appealed strongly to the bibulous Chapelle ; ' ' Mon- 
sieurs," he exclaimed in alcoholic frenzy, '' are we 
not cowards ? It is a noble maxim that we have just 
quoted; let us act upon it. The river is hard by; 
let us drown ourselves. It is stupid to murmur 
when we can escape from what we murmur against." 
The other topers agreed; embraced each other for 
a final farewell, and were about to leave the house 
when Moliere appeared upon the scene. As well as 
they could, his guests explained the situation, only 
to be reproached by the dramatist for having left 
him out of consideration; had they no more affec- 
tion for him than such an oversight implied? The 
ever-ready Chapelle admitted they had done their 
friend an injustice, but made what amends he could 
by inviting him to join them at the eleventh hour. 
'' Gently," Moliere replied; " regard must be had 
to the time when such a sacrifice as this is made. 
If we drowned ourselves at this hour it would be 
said that we were either drunk or driven to despair. 
It will be the last action of our lives, and its heroic 
nature must be made patent to the world. No; 
let it be when the sun is high in the heavens, 
when people are astir, when it will be seen that 
we are in full possession of our faculties." 
Once more the pliable Chapelle agreed, and Moliere 



238 Old Paris 

had the satisfaction of seeing his guests to 
bed. 

Manifestly such clubs as these could not survive 
such unique hosts. And the seeds of decay were 
inherent in many other literary reunions just be- 
cause they were called into existence by way of pro- 
test. Such, for example, was the Cenacle, that band 
of enthusiasts who toiled for the Eomantic revival. 
Chief among its members was Victor Hugo, others 
included such like-minded writers as Alfred de 
Vigny, Jules de Resseguier, and Emile and Antony 
Deschamps. Sainte-Beuve, too, was of the number, 
and once paid a tribute to his colleagues in these 
lines : 

" Both good and great they were, from jealous passions free; 
Nor suffer'd that the honey of their verse should be 

Barb'd with an angry sting; 
Though high as zenith-sun their fame, and all ablaze, 
It ne'er was known to burn with scorching rays 

The tiniest flower of spring." 

Throughout the winter months the members of 
the Cenacle met at each other's houses; in the sum- 
mer they made excursions into the country; in 
winter or summer their chief concern was to cpn- 
firm each other in the faith of Romance, and when 
that triumphed the mission of the club was at an 
end. 

So, too, a more modern example of the literary 
club, ' ' the Flaubert dinner " or ' ' the dinner of un- 



The Clubs 239 

successful authors," carried its failure in its con- 
stitution. For all the members, Flaubert, and Zola, 
and Jules de Goncourt, and Daudet, and Tourgue- 
neff, gradually qualified for automatic expulsion. 
But those gatherings were delightful while they 
lasted, *' friendly dinners," said Daudet, '^ where 
we talked in perfect freedom, elbows on table, our 
minds thoroughly roused to action. ' ' The club often 
changed its place of meeting, wandering from cafe 
to cafe in search of the Normandy butter demanded 
by Flaubert or the sea-urchins stipulated by Zola, 
and the gatherings were protracted from seven in 
the evening until two o 'clock the following morning. 
Books and the drama, the politics of the hour, the 
chief incidents of the passing day, were all eagerly 
debated, Flaubert and Zola in their shirt-sleeves 
and Tourgueneff lounging on a divan, but in the end 
the talk ever veered to the '' ever-present themes 
and ideas of love and death." When Flaubert died 
the dinners became a hollow feast; despite several 
efforts to resume them after his funeral, his empty 
seat and the absence of his genial laugh proved how 
futile those efforts were. And so the project was 
dropped and the Flaubert dinner numbered among 
the Parisian clubs of the past. 



CHAPTER VIII 

PLEASURE GAEDENS 

Pleasure gardens were a comparatively late ad- 
dition to the amenities of old Paris. Those maps 
of the city which depict its growth in diagram, and 
those quaint bird's-eye views which perpetuate its 
aspect as it appeared in the seventeenth century, 
offer sufficient explanation of that fact. Take, for 
example, such a map as that which shows the in- 
circling line of bastion fortifications, and within 
that line the five other outlines which have at dif- 
ferent periods marked the limits of the city, and it 
will be impossible to examine such a diagram with- 
out being reminded of a transverse section of a tree 
trunk roughly octagonal in shape. At the heart of 
the section, the core of the tree as it were, is a dark 
spot of small dimensions, and that tiny nucleus rep- 
resents the extent and condition of Paris in the 
seventeenth century. When that impression is sup- 
plemented by an inspection of a bird's-eye view of 
the city at that period, the narrow streets and 
densely packed houses make it obvious that it was 
necessary for Paris to burst its bonds before it 
could indulge in such luxuries as pleasure gardens. 

240 



Pleasure Gardens 241 

Sucli an abandonment of the old city walls did not 
take place until midway through the eighteenth cen- 
tury. The Paris of Montesquieu in the first quarter 
of that century was ' ' a city built in the air, ' ' a city 
of *^ six or seven houses on one another," that is, 
a congeries of high buildings so constructed because 
space was limited. It was an early example of the 
problem of Manhattan island without a legitimate 
excuse for indulging in skyscrapers. In 1749 Vol- 
taire appealed in vain for more elbow room in the 
city, for open spaces and " roomy cross-ways; " and 
six years later Mirabeau complained that the quays 
and the bridges of the Seine were the only spacious 
thoroughfares, and that there was " no place for 
public festivities. ' ' 

For many years, indeed, the principal al fresco 
amusement of the Parisian was the promenade. 
For this innocent occupation the ramparts of the city 
were in great favour, and also the gardens of the 
Palais Royal, the Tuileries, and the Luxembourg, 
but, in course of time, the promenaders, especially 
amorous couples, ventured outside the boundaries 
of the city proper into the fields and rural lanes 
around the capital. Hence the distinction drawn by 
a writer of the early eighteenth century : ' * We have 
two sorts of promenades in Paris ; the one to which 
people go to see and be seen, the other to be seen 
by nobody." In those days the Parisians were 
easily amused; in fact, with many of them, a taste 



242 Old Paris 

for simple pleasures survived until well on in the 
nineteenth century, for Gavarni, in recalling the 
days of his youth, was wont to dwell upon the many 
pleasure parties who found all their requirements 
met by unpretentious outings in the Bois de Bou- 
logne. 

In the second half of the eighteenth century, how- 
ever, a change began to manifest itself in the char- 
acter of out-door amusements. And the man who 
seems to have been most responsible for that change 
was an enterprising and ingenious Italian named 
Torre who, in August, 1764, obtained special per- 
mission to exhibit a grand display of fireworks. 
According to an account of that event preserved by 
Disraeli in his '' Curiosities of Literature," the 
Parisians " admired the variety of the colours, and 
the ingenious forms of his fire. But his first ex- 
hibition was disturbed by the populace, as well as 
by the apparent danger of the fire, although it was 
displayed on the Boulevards. In October it was 
repeated; and proper precautions having been 
taken, they admired the beauty of the fire, without 
fearing it. These artificial fires are described as 
having been rapidly and splendidly executed. The 
exhibition closed with a transparent triumphal arch, 
and a curtain illuminated by the same fire, admira- 
bly exhibiting the palace of Plutoi Around the 
columns, stanzas were inscribed, supported by cu- 
pids, and other fanciful embellishments. Among 



Pleasure Gardens 243 

these little pieces of poetry appeared the following 
one, which ingeniously announced a more perfect 
exhibition : 

" ' The icy gale, the falling snow. 

Extinction to these Fires shall bring; 
But, like the Flowers, with brighter glow. 
They shall renew their charms in spring.' " 

Torre, in fact, had the genius of a showman and 
the prescience of a diplomat. He was confident of 
his ability to give the Parisian a new form of amuse- 
ment, and he evidently had sufficient capital not to 
be in too great a hurry to reap the harvest of his 
enterprise. And so, after the manner of an astute 
manufacturer who believes he has a good article to 
offer the public, Torre paved his way by offering 
samples gratis. His public firework exhibitions, in 
short, were so much ground-bait; he appreciated 
the value of whetting the curiosity of the people 
quite as keenly as the modern circus manager who 
sends his animals and performers parading through 
a town in the interests of publicity. 

Five years after that free exhibition of fireworks, 
then, the enterprising Torre began to benefit from 
his well-laid plans. A paragraph in the ^' Annual 
Eegister " of London, dated June, 1769, is signifi- 
cant of the success which the clever Italian had won. 
" They write from Paris, that on the festival of 
Corpus Christi the sieur Torre opened his new 



244 Old Paris 

Vauxhall, near St. Martin's gate, under the denomi- 
nation of the Feasts of Tempe. He has laid out up- 
wards of fifty thousand crowns to establish this 
place of entertainment, which is to be open Sundays 
and Thursdays. It was calculated that there were 
between ten and twelve thousand persons present; 
the first evening ; they pay half a crown admittance ; 
and all the opulent families, both of court and city, 
seem eager to shut up and stifle themselves there, 
instead of going to breathe the pure air in the public 
walks. ' ' 

That paragraph is interesting for several reason-s. 
It indicates, for one thing, the situation of the Vaux- 
hall Torre, or the Summer Vauxhall, as it was also 
called, as being close to the Porte Saint Martin, 
which now stands in the midst of the surging life 
of the Grands Boulevards. In 1769 that triumphal 
arch was practically one of the gates of the city, and 
hence the locality of Torre's place of amusement 
shows that a beginning had been made towards seek- 
ing sites for such resorts outside the city proper. 
Again, the name used to describe the place, Vaux- 
hall, is evidence that Torre was acquainted with the 
history of the London resort of that name and in- 
spired by a desire to provide Paris with an imita- 
tion. For, at that time, the Vauxhall of London had 
been in existence more than a century and was at 
the height of its popularity. The time was propi- 
tious for the copying of British institutions, for at 



Pleasure Gardens 245 

that juncture, as Gibbon had noted a year or two 
earlier, British opinions, British fashions, and even 
British games were being eagerly adopted by the 
French. And, finally, the paragraph of the London 
chronicler, with its reference to the stifling atmos- 
phere of Torre's Vauxhall, seems to show that at 
first the idea of the Vauxhall was not clearly com- 
prehended, that, in short, the copyist had failed to 
appreciate the necessity of providing attractive 
gardens as an essential part of the scheme. 

For a time, however, the Vauxhall Torre pros- 
pered amazingly. As responsive as the Athenians 
to anything new, the Parisians poured out of St. 
Martin's Gate in their thousands and handsomely 
recompensed their Italian entertainer for all his free 
fireworks exhibitions. And it was not long ere 
Torre 's example was followed by other enterprising 
showmen. In the few years subsequent to 1769 there 
was an epidemic of Vauxhalls. One of the most 
pretentious of these imitations was that erected at 
the western end of the Champs Elysees at a cost of 
eight hundred thousand dollars, and named the 
Colisee. The chief building was a spacious rotunda 
nearly eighty feet in diameter, admirably adapted, 
it might have been thought, for the middle-class 
dancers it was designed to attract. But here again 
the mistake was made of providing for practically 
one type of amusement only, namely, dancing — a 
mistake which soon proved fatal. Besides, in those 



246 Old Paris 

early days, the Vauxhalls were opened only on two 
or three days of the week. 

Such buildings as those erected by Torre and his 
earliest imitators were really more suitable for win- 
ter than summer amusement, and hence it is hardly 
surprising that the most successful of them all was 
that known as the Winter Vauxhall. 

By the winter of 1784 this was firmly established 
in Parisian favour not merely for the elegance of 
its saloons but for the resource and ingenuity dis- 
played in the entertainment of its patrons. And 
never was that Winter Vauxhall the scene of greater 
gaiety than at the famous fete of 1784. That was 
the winter, it will be remembered, which, by reason 
of its severity and the suffering thereby entailed on 
the poor, helped to prepare the way for the French 
Revolution. It was also a season remarkable for 
strenuous efforts to relieve the widespread distress. 
In these charitable labours, as is always the case, 
none shared more heartily than the members of the 
theatrical profession. Each playhouse gave a spe- 
cial performance for the benefit of the poor, the 
piece presented at the Comedie-Frangaise being the 
'' Coriolanus " of Jean La Harpe, which, notwith- 
standing the object for whiish it was given, was at- 
tacked by M. de Champcenetz in a biting epigram. 

It is necessary to keep the foregoing in mind to 
appreciate a lively scene which took place in the 
Winter Vauxhall at the fete mentioned above. The 



Pleasure Gardens 247 

fete had been arranged in the interests of the poor 
of the city, and the programme included contribu- 
tions by the leading players from the principal thea- 
tres in addition to dancing, illuminations, and lotter- 
ies. Until well on in the evening, the lotteries had 
provided much innocent amusement. The prizes, 
which were drawn for at intervals in sets of five, 
consisted of inexpensive jewelry and a number of 
grotesque china figures, the latter creating much 
merriment as they were handed to the winners. 
One of these figures, which represented a shivering 
old man in the act of warming himself, was awarded 
to a sprightly officer, who, holding it aloft, asked in 
a loud tone, " What is this supposed to be? " At 
once a voice in the crowd answered, " A Coriola- 
nus." The speaker was M. de Champcenetz, and it 
so happened that La Harpe, the author of the play, 
was also close at hand. The jester was aware of 
that fact and thought it discreet to take refuge in 
a friend's box, whither, however, he was followed 
by the irate dramatist. And now the spectators 
were treated to an item not on the programme, a 
fierce duel of words between La Harpe and Champ- 
cenetz, the latter at length managing to recite his 
epigram on his adversary's play: 

" Pour les pauvres, la Comedie 
Joue une pauvre tragedie; 
C'est hien le cas, en verite, 
De Vapplaudir par charite,'' 



248 Old Paris 

Although not lacking in invective, La Harpe was no 
match for his opponent in readiness of wit, and so 
he retired from the unequal combat, especially as 
his foe had the advantage in situation, Champcenetz 
firing off his sallies from the elevation of his friend's 
box while the dramatist had the less conspicuous 
standpoint of the arena floor. 

Fleury, the comedian, who describes this incident, 
gives at the same time a brief account of the other 
attractions of the Winter Vauxhall on the occasion 
of that memorable fete. Such a display of splen- 
dour, he says, had never before been witnessed. 
" The four saloons were sumptuously decorated; 
the colonnade over the rotunda was illuminated by 
a most ingenious contrivance, by means of which a 
central light, not visible to the spectators, diffused 
streams of variegated radiance — blue, red, yellow, 
and white. The colonnade, thus lighted, looked like 
some fairy structure formed of suspended vapours, 
so light and shadowy, that it seemed as though a 
single breath of air might annihilate them. But the 
rotunda — how shall I describe the rotunda f " It 
was not the building itself which gave pause to 
Fleury 's pen, but the galaxy of feminine beauty 
whose charms he felt incompetent to depict. Such 
arms and hands and waists and " lovely shoulders " 
as would have adorned a far more elegant setting 
than a box of the Winter Vauxhall. Perhaps it was 
that display of the flesh in environments usually 



Pleasure Gardens 249 

thought to savour of the world and the devil which, 
made the cures of Paris decline to handle the 
money raised by the fetes for the benefit of the 
poor. 

Some six years subsequent to the date of that 
fete those Parisians who found enjoyment in fre- 
quenting such resorts as the Winter Vauxhall were 
able to gratify their taste in the heart of the city. 
Writing in January, 1790, Arthur Young, whose 
interests were more centred in cabbage than in 
pleasure gardens, gave a mildly satirical account of 
a recent addition to the amusement resorts of the 
city. " At night to the national circus, as it is 
called, at the Palais Royal, a building in the gardens, 
or area, of that palace, the most whimsical and ex- 
pensive folly that is easily to be imagined : it is a 
large ball-room, sunk half its height under ground; 
and, as if this circumstance were not sufficiently 
adapted to make it damp enough, a garden is planted 
on the roof, and a river is made to flow around it, 
which, with the addition of some spirting jets d'eau, 
have undoubtedly made it a delicious place for a 
winter's entertainment. The expense of this gew- 
gaw building, the project of some of the Duke of 
Orleans's friends, I suppose, and executed at his 
expense, would have established an English farm, 
with all the principles, buildings, live stock, tools, 
and crops, on a scale that would have done honour 
to the first sovereign of Europe ; for it would have 



250 Old Paris 

converted five thousand arpents of desert into a 
garden. As to the result of the mode that has been 
pursued, of investing such a capital, I know no 
epithet equal to its merits. It is meant to be con- 
cert, ball, coffee, and billiard room, with shops, etc., 
designed to be something in the style of the amuse- 
ments of our Pantheon. There were music and 
singing to-night, but the room being almost empty, 
it was, on the whole, equally cold and sombre." 

If all the Winter Vauxhalls of Paris were con- 
ducted on similar lines it is not surprising that they 
failed to attract the populace save on special occa- 
sions. To think of visiting in winter a half-under- 
ground ball-room surrounded by a river and 
equipped with numerous fountains is enough to 
freeze the blood in one's veins. From such a chilly 
atmosphere it is a genial relief to turn to the picture 
given by another diarist of that period, namely. Dr. 
John Moore, an Englishman who was in Paris in 
the August of 1792, and who recorded in his journal 
the incidents of an evening drive in the Champs 
Elysees. 

Although the Tenth of August and the sack of the 
Tuileries had happened but a few days earlier, the 
Elysian Fields on that summer night were crowded 
with people of all classes. Under the trees or on 
open stretches of grass countless booths had been 
put up which resounded with music and singing. 
Here and there pantomimes and puppet-shows were 



Pleasure Gardens 251 

surrounded by laughing crowds; elsewhere merry 
dancing-parties tripped the light fantastic toe over 
the greensward. " Are these people as happy as 
they seem? " asked Dr. Moore of his French com- 
panion, who rejoined, " They are as happy as the 
gods." And yet the shadow of the Eevolution hov- 
ered over all that merrymaking on the Champs 
Elysees. " One fellow, on a kind of stage, had a 
monkey who played a thousand tricks. When the 
man called him ' aristocrat,' the monkey flew at his 
throat with every mark of rage ; but when he called 
him ' a good patriot,' the monkey expressed satis- 
faction, and caressed his master." 

But the desire to counteract the chilly impression 
of that frigid Vauxhall of the Palais Royal has been 
gratified at the expense of chronology; it is neces- 
sary to go back a few years in the history of such 
resorts. 

Several years, then, before the famous fete at the 
Winter Vauxhall the imitators of Torre had im- 
proved upon his example. That is, they had real- 
ized that the Vauxhall of London was so popular 
with the crowd because it had gardens as well as a 
rotunda, and that such resorts to be successful must 
cater for summer rather than winter amusement. 
Hence within a dozen years of the opening of 
Torre's Vauxhall there were established many other 
resorts which offered the added attraction of pic- 
turesque gardens. 



252 Old Paris 

Among the early pleasure gardens one of the most 
popular was that known as the Eedoute Chinoise. 
And the high favour in which it was held was well 
deserved. The Chinese Redout was thoroughly well 
equipped, for, in addition to the inevitable rotunda, 
it had an excellent cafe, and its spacious gardens, 
which were enclosed by high walls, were famous for 
their well-kept flower-beds, their picturesque walks, 
their tree-encircled nooks, and their splendid tennis- 
courts. Owing to those tennis-courts and to the 
further fact that the gardens afforded many se- 
cluded retreats in the early hours of the day, the 
Chinese Redout was a favourite haunt of the come- 
dian Fleury and his fellow actor Jean Dugazon. 
Fleury was an excellent tennis player and the in- 
structor of Dugazon in the game, and when the two 
were not practising they found the garden a pleas- 
ant spot in which to rehearse their parts after break- 
fasting in the cafe. 

At the time when the two actors were frequent 
patrons of the Chinese Redout all Paris was excited 
over the doings of the famous impostor Count Ca- 
gliostro and his beautiful wife. Fleury had been 
promised an introduction to the celebrated couple, 
but the promise was still unredeemed when he met 
them in an unexpected way. On entering the cafe of 
the Chinese Redout one morning with Ms friend 
Dugazon the young woman who presided at the pay- 
desk greeted the two in an excited and mysterious 



Pleasure Gardens 253 

manner. " Gentlemen," she said, '' I have such 
news for you ! Count Cagliostro is here. He came 
with his wife to breakfast. Take no notice ; but go 
into the garden. Give Jacques a trifle, and he will 
procure you a sight of the great conjurer." 

Jacques was soon discovered and duly tipped, 
and the three had started on their exploration when 
they were joined by the young woman from the 
cafe. ' ' I forgot to tell you, ' ' she hurriedly re- 
marked, '^ that Count Cagliostro requested we 
would not admit anybody to the gardens whilst he 
should be here. But I could not think of denying 
entrance to such good customers as you, gentlemen ; 
and I told him that I would let no one in except two 
or three conseillers de hailliage, who are in the habit 
of coming. I don't know what may be your pro- 
fession, gentlemen ; but it struck me that you might 
possibly be conseillers de hailliage. At all events, 
you can easily pretend you are; for I should not 
wish him to know that I have told an untruth." 
'^ But, madame," said Fleury, " you forget that the 
count is a conjurer." " Ah! " said she, laughing, 
*' conjurer as he is, he doesn't know the difference 
between Burgundy and Bourdeaux. I will answer 
for it he will not find you out." 

Encouraged by such confidence in their powers of 
impersonation, the two actors resumed their quest. 
Fleury confessed that he was consumed with anx- 
iety to see the mysterious count, and attributed to 



254 Old Paris 

his companion an even keener desire to gaze upon 
Cagliostro's beautiful wife. Their exploration coon 
had a successful issue. 

Fleury shall tell how. '' We observed a little 
movement (which I should find it difficult to de- 
scribe), regularly given to the branches of a lilac 
tree. The branches swung backward and forward 
as regularly as the pendulum of a clock. At the 
same time we perceived a sort of wand rising and 
falling, though we could not see the hand that held 
it ; the foliage of the lilac tree, and some thick clus- 
tering shrubs, intercepted our view. The measured 
movement above mentioned was not unaccompanied 
by sound ; some words were uttered, but they were 
in a foreign and to us unintelligible tongue. We 
prepared ourselves to witness some sublime mys- 
tery, and we eagerly hurried along the little garden 
path, which, after several turnings and windings, 
suddenly opened on a grass-plot. Judge, reader, 
what was our amazement when we beheld the grand 
Copt, the awful Cagliostro, playing at see-saw ! . . . 
grotesquely bestriding the swing, which formed the 
favourite diversion of the little boys and girls who 
visited the Redoute on Sundays. Madame was set- 
ting the machine in motion, whilst the count held in 
his hand a light switch or cane, which he used in the 
way of a horsewhip, at the same time uttering some 
incomprehensible words. To what language these 
words belonged I do not pretend to say; they were 



Pleasure Gardens 255 

probably a compound of Greek, Latin, Hunga- 
rian, and Italian, for the count spoke all these lan- 
guages. ' ' 

Forgetting the dignified character they had been 
requested to assume, the two actors gave way to a 
burst of laughter. Of course that put an end to the 
ludicrous performance, but Cagliostro, jumping 
from the see-saw and facing the intruders, had a 
ready excuse for his childlike behaviour. If they 
were philosophers, he said, they would admit that 
the see-saw was not a bad aid to the digestion. 
Dugazon could not so quickly recover his sobriety 
to admit the force of that plea, but his inclination to 
argue the point was speedily overborne by the 
count's wife, who turned on the actor the effectual 
artillery of her lovely dark eyes and overwhelmed 
him. At this juncture Fleury intervened with an 
apology, adding that Cagliostro 's indulgence in such 
innocent amusements did him great honour, and re- 
questing that he and his lady would favour him and 
his friend with their company for a quarter of an 
hour. The request was at once granted, and for a 
brief while the four walked hither and thither about 
the garden discussing various matters with the 
familiarity of friends. Dugazon and Fleury in turn 
led the conversation to Cagliostro 's own doings, to 
his cures of the sick, his summoning of spirits from 
the unseen, and other mysterious proceedings, but 
to each question the count had a ready answer and 



256 Old Paris 

stoutly maintained the purity of his motives and the 
genuineness of his knowledge. 

Never before had the garden of the Chinese Re- 
dout witnessed such a singular scene. The account 
Fleury gives of the interview is unique in the copi- 
ous Cagliostro literature for the glimpse it gives of 
the impostor at close quarters and in undress. And 
to the end the two actors flattered themselves that 
they had successfully maintained their pose as con- 
seillers de hailliage; Fleury, indeed, was confirmed 
in that supposition by Cagliostro 's apparent desire 
to turn the conversation when it touched upon the 
question of law in relation to his cures of the sick. 
But there was a surprise in store for the actors. 
"\¥hen the stipulated fifteen minutes had expired, 
Cagliostro, consulting his watch, suddenly broke 
out into a quotation from the ^' Tartuffe " of 
Moliere — 

" certain devotions 
Recall me to my closet; you'll forgive me 
For leaving you so soon " — 

and offering his arm to his wife, he, with a profound 
bow, took leave of his new friends with the remark : 
' ' Adieu, M. Fleury ! Adieu, M. Dugazon ! You 
wished me to act a part for your entertainment — 
but you have been acting for mine." 

That dislocation of social life which prevailed 
more or less during the turmoil and terror of the 



Pleasure Gardens 257 

French Revolution naturally reacted adversely on 
the pleasure gardens of Paris. The rougher classes 
were provided with ample excitement by the Jaco- 
bins Club, street assaults, raids on the mansions of 
royalty and nobles, and the unceasing clanking of 
the guillotine ; the more refined citizens were, in the 
main, too uncertain of their hold on life to care over 
much about amusements. 

Hence it was not until the Revolution had ceased 
to be a terror to life and Paris once more rejoiced 
in orderly government under the control of Napo- 
leon that the pleasure garden resumed its place 
among the amusements of the city. In the early 
years of the nineteenth century, then, such resorts 
were numerous, chief among them being the Fras- 
cati Gardens and the two Tivoli's. Of the first a 
concise account is given in the diary of an English- 
man who visited the French capital in 1802. '' Af- 
ter dinner," he wrote, '^ we visited Frascati, which 
is a kind of tea gardens, situated on the Boulevards, 
at the extremity of the Rue de la Loi. This garden 
is not very extensive, but is laid out with much 
taste, and exhibits, in its narrow space, a surprising 
variety of objects. At the entrance, a kind of gal- 
lery lined with mirrors leads into a square building, 
divided into several apartments, all of which are 
fitted up for the purpose of taking refreshments. 
The garden itself is divided into two parts, by a 
central walk or alley. On each side of this walk are 



258 Old Paris 

erected small pillars, round which are entwined 
woodbines, passion flowers, and several other spe- 
cies of parasitic plants. The capitals of these pil- 
lars are connected by rods of iron, to which are at- 
tached the names of the most celebrated ancient and 
modern poets; among which I particularly distin- 
guished my countrymen Pope, Dryden, and Milton. 
At the end of the central walk, there is a beautiful 
piece of rock-work forming a grotto, over which is 
stretched a pavilion of painted canvas. The remain- 
der of this extremity of the garden is judiciously 
diversified with miniature eminences, covered with 
shrubs, with shady walks, and arbours; the whole 
adorned with statues, each of which holds in its hand 
a small lamp. This is a truly tasteful mode of il- 
lumination, and I could easily give credit to our 
valet's assertion, that the lighting of these lamps 
produces a very fine efifect. No money is required 
for admission into Frascati. The profits of the pro- 
prietors arise from the sale of ices and other re- 
freshments. ' ' 

Different conditions prevailed at both the Tivoli 
Gardens. Those resorts were evidently keen rivals, 
and each was situated in the Quartier de 1 'Europe, 
a district so named because its chief thoroughfares 
were christened from the capitals of Europe. One 
of them was visited by that diarist whose descrip- 
tion of the Frascati G-ardens is quoted above, and he 
discovered that while he could enjoy the delights of 



Pleasure Gardens 259 

the former gratis, admission to the Tivoli could be 
obtained only by the purchase of a ticket. But there 
was ample compensation for the investment. That 
Tivoli consisted of a large garden on an elevated 
terrace where diverse entertainments were pro- 
vided. The company was numerous, and various 
groups were engaged in such '^ frivolous amuse- 
ments ' ' that the visitor imagined he had been trans- 
ported to a boisterous English fair. In one corner 
elderly and well-dressed people were riding on 
round-abouts, in another see-saws of the type fa- 
voured by Cagliostro attracted many patrons, while 
elsewhere a large crowd gaped and laughed at the 
grimaces of a merry-andrew. Nor were those all 
the amusements of this pleasure garden; several 
groups found enjoyment in playing at battledore 
and shuttlecock, more adventurous spirits tried 
their skill on tight-ropes, and in the centre of the 
garden a large platform was occupied by two or 
three hundred dancers. 

Notwithstanding those numerous attractions it 
would seem that the other Tivoli, situated on the 
Eue de Clichy not far from the site now occupied 
by the Casino de Paris, was a still greater favourite 
with the Parisians of the early nineteenth century. 
*' This," said a visitor of 1815, " is the most beau- 
tiful public garden in Paris. The price of admis- 
sion was three francs, fifteen sous, on account of the 
fireworks, which exceeded anything I had either wit- 



260 Old Paris 

nessed or imagined ; the music and singing were ex- 
cellent, and some rope-dancing concluded the eve- 
ning. These gardens are very tastefully laid out, 
with shady walks and pavilions; a profusion of 
sweet-scented flowers exhale a delightful fragrance, 
and throughout the whole are interspersed statues 
and lamps; making it, according to the Parisian 
expression, a Little Elysium. Waltzes and cotillions 
were danced by private individuals with the ele- 
gance of taste peculiar to French females." Ac- 
cording to this chronicler, that Tivoli was patronized 
by the better classes. 

Perhaps one of the chief secrets of the popularity 
of the gardens in the Eue de Clichy may be found in 
the fact that they were the scene of several spectac- 
ular balloon ascensions in the summer of 1807. They 
were made by Garnerin in August and September, 
and as the aeronaut had many rivals the ascensions 
attracted large crowds of unfriendly as well as 
friendly spectators. Each ascent took place at 
night, one at eleven and the other at half-past ten 
o'clock, and at both times the event was made the 
occasion of a grand gala at the gardens. Garnerin 
described the sight as it appeared to him from the 
balloon. " I was in the full force of my ascension 
when the fireworks of Tivoli were let off ; the rock- 
ets scarcely seemed to rise from the earth; Paris, 
with its lamps, appeared a plain, studded with lu- 
minous spots." As those were the early days of 



Pleasure Gardens 261 

aerial exploits, it may easily be imagined that such 
feats as Garnerin's gave the Tivoli of the Rue de 
Clichy an enormous advantage over the rival gar- 
dens. 

A third Tivoli figures in the history of the pleas- 
ure gardens of Paris, for the Chateau Rouge on the 
Rue de Clinancourt was also known as the Nouveau 
Tivoli. This resort could lay claim to historical as- 
sociations of a unique kind. The pavilion was none 
other than the building erected by Henry IV for his 
fair mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrees, in the last decade 
of the sixteenth century, and seems to have been 
occupied by her during the last seven years of her 
brief life. There were born several of the children 
she bore to the king, and hence the place must have 
possessed a peculiar interest for that royal lover, 
who was so attached to his beautiful mistress that 
when she died he set a new example in regal mourn- 
ing by wearing black instead of the usual violet. 
Many generations later the pavilion acquired an- 
other notable association, for it was within its walls 
the preliminaries of the Treaty of Paris were 
signed. 

But the conductors of the New Tivoli did not rely 
merely upon historical associations. The gardens 
were, as usual, profusely decorated with lamp-bear- 
ing statues and thickly studded with trees and 
shrubs and flower-beds, while the amusements in- 
cluded music and dancing, swings and billiard-tables, 



262 Old Paris 

shooting-galleries and buffets, and a Pont des Sou- 
pirs specially designed for the delectation of sighing 
lovers. The inevitable fireworks, too, often figured 
in the programme of the evening. 

At the period when the New Tivoli was at the 
height of its popularity many other pleasure gar- 
dens of a similar type were in great favour with the 
Parisian. Two of these, the Chateau des Fleurs and 
the Jardin d'Hiver, were situated in the Avenue 
des Champs Elysees, and a third, the Jardin Mabille, 
was to be found in the Avenue Montaigne. They 
had, of course, many features in common, but the 
Winter Garden stood in a class by itself by reason 
of the fact that the entire area was roofed with 
glass. All round the huge structure ran a graceful 
gallery filled with flowers, and the floor space was 
laid out as a garden in which orange trees and rare 
exotic plants were varied by fountains and grottos 
and groups of statuary. " Indeed," exclaimed an 
enthusiastic eulogist, " but for the welcome absence 
of the tiger and cobra-capello, it would need no 
great stretch of the imagination to believe one's self 
here transported to the most luxuriant regions of 
the East. Here the camellia, the yucca, and the 
cactus will meet the visitor's eye in juxtaposition 
with the palm-tree, the araucania, and the banana. 
An aviary filled with exotic birds is to the right ; in 
the centre of the garden is a grass-plot, extending 
to a romantic grotto ; while the few walls that con- 



Pleasure Gardens 263 

nect some portions of the iron framework are com- 
pletely concealed with mirrors and lined with passi- 
floras and other creeping plants." The large tran- 
septs were reserved for balls and concerts all the 
year round. 

While the pleasures of the Jardin d'Hiver, then, 
were not restricted to any one season of the year, 
it was different with the Chateau des Fleurs and the 
Jardin Mabille. These were summer resorts, and 
the first, as may be inferred from its name, was dis- 
tinguished for its wealth of floral beauty. In addi- 
tion each garden was well equipped with those acces- 
sories thought to be essential for such places — a 
profusion of lights, numerous cafes, platforms for 
dancing, orchestras, shooting-galleries, and other 
pastimes. In these gardens, then, it is easy to dis- 
cern the origin of the cafe-chantant, by which they 
have been replaced in popular favour. 

Many years before either of the Tivoli's or the 
Chateau des Fleurs catered for the amusement of all 
classes there already existed in the city a garden 
which it was the ambition of most Parisians to visit. 
That famous pleasance was none other than the 
tastefully laid out grounds which surrounded the 
house Beaumarchais built for himself on the Boule- 
vard which now bears his name. The garden of the 
famous dramatist was the wonder of Paris during 
the latter part of the eighteenth century, but no one 
was allowed to visit it except on the production of 



264 Old Paris 

a special card signed by Beaumarchais himsell 
According to Georges Cain, his friend, Victorien 
Sardou, delights to narrate how he, when a boy of 
seven, invaded that famous garden. By that time 
the fencing was much decayed, and one day the 
future playwright' caught a glimpse of the garden 
through a crack in the palings. "So he and an- 
other lad of his own age wrenched away a paling 
with their hoop-sticks, and in a delight of terror 
slipped into the unknown domain. What an amaze- 
ment ! They found themselves in a Sleeping Beau- 
ty 's realm. Weeds, lianas, branches, trees, had 
grown over everything. It was a flora and fauna 
of the virgin forests; rabbits, birds and butterflies 
were its denizens ; and Robinson Crusoe was not 
more surprised in exploring his island than these 
two youngsters in wandering about this jungle.'* 
Of course the glories of the garden as a garden were 
departed, and now the site is wholly obliterated by 
drab houses and commonplace shops. 

When it was stated at the beginning of this chap- 
ter that Torre, the enterprising proprietor of the 
earliest Vauxhall, appears to have been responsible 
for that change in al fresco amusements which set 
in about the middle of the eighteenth century, it had 
not been forgotten that the Parisian had long en- 
joyed the liberty of the gardens of the Palais Royal, 
the Tuileries, and the Luxembourg. The first was 
at one time the fashionable promenade of the city, 




ENTRANCE TO EEAUWARCHAIS GARDEN. 




GARDEN OF THE PALAIS ROYAL. 



Pleasure Gardens 265 

while tlie second was a more popular rendezvous 
and the third the resort of the studious. Among 
these public gardens, then, that of the Tuileries was 
the favourite with the greater number, and many 
are the descriptions of the animated scenes wit- 
nessed there in the eighteenth century. It was there, 
according to Montesquieu, that '^ the race of Quid- 
nuncs " assembled, men who were of no use to the 
state but who thought themselves important be- 
cause they harangued upon glorious projects and 
talked of grand interests. But there were more 
frivolous saunterers in those gardens. " What can 
be more charming," exclaimed another writer, 
'' than these serried ranks of beautiful women who 
line the noble avenue of the Tuileries on a summer 
evening, and during the fine days of spring and 
autumn! The groups of people, all possessing 
some special variety of attraction, exchange a con- 
tinuous series of ideas which charm the mind, as the 
beauty of those who give utterance to them delights 
the eye." And still another annalist of the social 
life of Paris dilated with enthusiasm on the display 
of dress and the good-humoured badinage to be seen 
and heard in that resort. 

But Arthur Young has preserved a different pic- 
ture of the Tuileries. Walking there on a January 
morning of 1790 he saw Louis XVI being escorted 
to and fro as a prisoner, attended, it is true, by a 
page and officer of his household, but strictly 



266 Old Paris 

guarded by half a dozen grenadiers. '* The doors 
of the gardens," Young added, '^ are kept shut in 
respect to him, in order to exclude everybody but 
deputies, or those who have admission tickets. 
When he entered the palace, the doors of the gar- 
dens were thrown open for all without distinction, 
though the Queen was still walking with a lady of 
her court. She also was attended so closely by the 
gardes bourgeoise, that she could not speak, but in 
a low voice, without being heard by them. A mob 
followed her, talking very loud, and paying no other 
apparent respect than that of taking off their hats 
wherever she passed, which was indeed more than 
I expected. Her majesty does not appear to be in 
health ; she seemed to be much affected, and showed 
it in her face ; but the king is as plump as ease can 
render him." Young also noted the little garden 
which had been railed off for the use of the Dauphin, 
and saw that unfortunate lad busy with his hoe and 
rake while a couple of grim grenadiers kept guard. 
Eoyal comedy as well as royal tragedy has fig- 
ured in the history of the Tuileries gardens. In 
November, 1820, Caroline of Brunswick, the princess 
who had the misfortune to become the wife of 
George IV and the infatuation to bestow every kind 
of favour upon her Italian courier Bergami, escaped 
being divorced from her worthless husband on a 
technicality which was resorted to because a verdict 
of guilty would probably have led to a popular up- 



Ki 



¥' 




Pleasure Gardens 267 

rising in England. The trial of the Queen, and espe- 
cially the evidence which incriminated her with the 
handsome Bergami, was followed with keen interest 
by Parisians, and when it was reported that the 
hero had taken refuge in their city all classes bent 
themselves to the pastime of Bergami-hunting. The 
hue and cry reached its height in the Tuileries gar- 
dens one fine afternoon when the prospect of seeing 
Queen Caroline's lover caused a greftt crowd to as- 
semble. ^' It was a misfortune," stated a periodical 
of the time, '^ for a man to have anything of an 
Italian physiognomy, garnished with mustachios, 
hedged in with umbrageous whiskers, and set upon a 
pair of broad shoulders, for he ran the risk of being 
pointed out as Bergami himself, or at least as a 
striking likeness to him, and consequently became 
an object of most obtrusive and annoying observa- 
tion. Towards four o 'clock, no Bergami appearing, 
some mauvais plaisant contrived to direct the at- 
tention of those around him to a jolly, plump, good- 
humoured looking woman, about forty, seated upon 
one of the chairs, and without anything remarkable 
in person or dress, and in a very short time the whole 
concourse of persons who were in the garden, prob- 
ably to the amount of fifteen hundred or two thou- 
sand, surrounded the incognita." But the frail Car- 
oline was not in Paris ; she was in London enjoying 
her triumph over her royal spouse. 
Perhaps the chronicler who described the Luxenj- 



268 Old Paris 

bourg garden as the resort of thinkers based his gen- 
eralization on that incident in the career of Jean 
Jacques Rousseau to which reference has already 
been made. That sentimentalist, it will be remem- 
bered, used to spend his mornings wandering to and 
fro in that garden committing poetry to memory, 
and such an association does give some warrant for 
the legend which credited the thinkers of old Paris 
with a partiality for the Luxembourg. It was cer- 
tainly a much quieter retreat than the gardens of 
the Palais Royal or the Tuileries, and its distance 
from the centre of the city preserved it from becom- 
ing the promenade of fashion and frivolity. 

Even to this day the Luxembourg garden retains 
much of that Renaissance beauty which it acquired 
under the planning of Solomon Debrosse, who de- 
signed the palace and laid out the grounds for 
Marie de Medicis in the first quarter of the seven- 
teenth century. Something of the old-world charm 
has no doubt been destroyed by the children's play- 
ground, and the overloading of the terraces and 
walks with modern sculpture, but the exquisite Fon- 
taine de Medicis still remains, and there are yet many 
unspoilt nooks and corners which seem to exhale the 
spirit of the past. Although in so many respects a 
book of the modern age, George Moore 's ' ' Memoirs 
of my Dead Life " reflects not a little of that delight 
which the natives of old Paris took in the grounds 
surrounding the palace of Henry IV 's widow. In 



Pleasure Gardens 269 

Ms early manhood lie wondered whether there was 
anything better worth doing than to sit in those 
alleys of clipped limes and listen to the music of the 
fountains and watch the summer sunlight. '' When 
one tires of watching the sunlight there is no greater 
delight than to become absorbed in the beauty of the 
balustrades, the stately flights of steps, the long 
avenues of clipped limes, the shapely stone basins, 
every one monumented in some special way." And 
when those pleasures failed there were the odd fre- 
quenters of the garden to study — the man who fed 
the sparrows with crumbs held between his lips, the 
eccentric who wandered about in the costume of a 
Eobin Hood, the elderly couples who played foot- 
ball, and many more. 

During the topsy-turvy days of the French Rev- 
olution an effort was made to transform that stately 
pleasance into a mere pleasure garden of the com- 
monest type. Many of the finest trees were ruth- 
lessly felled to make space for cafes and cheap dan- 
cing-halls, but the return of ordered government 
happily put an end to such wanton plans. 

That Parisians had the free use of such gardens 
as those of the Palais Eoyal, the Tuileries, and the 
Luxembourg makes it easier to understand why the 
imitations of the Vauxhall and the Ranelagh of Lon- 
don did not attain either the long history or the suc- 
cess of their prototypes. And when once the idea 
was evolved of combining the cafe with the concert 



270 Old Paris 

it was inevitable that the pleasure gardens as such, 
notwithstanding lamp-bearing statues and balloons 
and fireworks, should gradually be numbered among 
the things of the past. 



CHAPTER IX 

STREET CHAEACTERS 

Before the pleasure garden had come into' exist- 
ence, and contemporaneously with the cheaper en- 
tertainment provided by the grounds of the Palais 
Royal, the Tuileries, and the Luxembourg, the eco- 
nomical or poorer Parisian was not entirely desti- 
tute of amusement. From the middle of the seven- 
teenth century the life of the city was brightened by 
a succession of street characters whose entertain- 
ments were doubtless a notable relief to the routine 
of the daily task. 

Those nomads of the streets were, indeed, a re- 
vival. Strictly speaking, their ancestry dates back 
to classical times, for it is well known that they were 
a conspicuous feature of the life of ancient Greece 
and Rome. Aristophanes has preserved the mepi- 
ory of the mountebank who sold rings as a preven- 
tative or cure for the bites of serpents, and Plutarch 
and other writers made many allusions to the tum- 
blers, jugglers, quacks, and fortune-tellers of their 
day. Most of these types figure in the mediaeval his- 
tory of Paris; we catch brief glimpses of them de- 
claiming verses from their rude wooden platforms 
or gesticulating to the sound of instruments, but 

271 



272 Old Paris 

they seem gradually to merge and disappear in the 
procession of miracle plays and mimed mysteries. 
When those miracle plays and mysteries at last gave 
place to the theatre of the secular drama, the street 
performer reappeared in the life of the city in a 
guise which linked him to his classical prototype. 

And nowhere was he so much in evidence as on the 
Pont Neuf. That is easily explained. Ample evi- 
dence has already been adduced of the narrowness 
and congestion of the streets of old Paris, and Vol- 
taire has been cited as complaining so late as 1749 
that the city lacked open spaces and ' ' roomy cross- 
ways. ' ' It will be remembered, also, that the one ex- 
ception to this condition was made in favour of the 
bridges and quays of the Seine. Now it must be 
borne in mind that, notwithstanding its name, the 
Pont Neuf is by far the oldest bridge over the river, 
dating, as it does, from the early years of the seven- 
teenth century. Such being the case, and remember- 
ing that the structure is really two bridges connected 
by a spacious island, it is not difficult to understand 
why the Pont Neuf soon became a favourite resort 
with the Parisian. As, also, it was for a long period 
the only bridge linking the left bank with the right 
bank, it was natural that dense throngs of people 
were constantly passing to and fro. 

These were ideal conditions for the street vendor 
and mountebank, and that they availed themselves 
of them to the utmost is cogently illustrated by a 



street Characters 273 

drawing of the seventeenth century. This picture of 
the island of the Pont Neuf shows that the spaces 
outside the railings of Henry IV 's statue were 
closely occupied by small stalls devoted to the sale 
of various articles, and that the opposite side of the 
road was pre-empted by showmen and quacks. Some 
of the latter are mounted on diminutive platforms 
while they dilate on the beauties of a series of pic- 
tures suspended from a post, but the centre of the 
drawing is given up to a kind of stage-caravan on 
wheels which is occupied by a couple of musicians 
and two other men who are selling their wares to the 
onlookers. 

Although this drawing belongs to a slightly later 
period, it may be accepted as a not unfaithful delin- 
eation of the scene which might have been witnessed 
daily on the Pont Neuf at the time when the most 
famous of Parisian street characters was at the 
height of his renown. This was Jean Salomon, who, 
however, hid his identity under the title of Tabarin, 
and thus gave to the language of France a word 
which now figures in all dictionaries as a synonym 
for '^ a merry-andrew, a buffoon." 

Tabarin was one of the first as well as the most 
notorious of the frequenters of the Pont Neuf. 
Born about 1584, he was a young man of some twenty 
summers when the bridge was completed, and, as he 
retired from his strenuous occupation in 1628, he 
was a well-known figure in the street life of Paris 



274 Old Paris 

for nearly two decades. He did not court popular 
favour single-handed; on the contrary, he was the 
partner of Philippe Girard, otherwise the quack doc- 
tor known as Mondor, and there were occasions — 
weekly, in the latter part of his career — when he 
had the assistance of his wife and others for more 
elaborate performances. A contemporary portrait 
shows him dressed as a clown and brandishing a 
wooden sword. He wore a moustache and a pointed 
beard and affected a soft felt hat which his nimble 
fingers twisted into countless amusing shapes. 

While Mondor was responsible for the concoction 
of the quack remedies sold on the Pont Neuf — reme- 
dies which were doubtless no more harmful or effi- 
cacious than those bottles of Seine water mixed with 
a little nitre purveyed by that successor of the 
eighteenth century of whom Voltaire remarked that 
he could only be reproached with ' ' selling the water 
of the Seine at too high a price ' ' — and despite the 
occasional assistance of other performers, the chief 
attraction for the crowd was Tabarin himself. He 
was the persuasive orator without whose jokes and 
impromptu eulogies Mondor would have had few 
sales. That, seeing he was a Parisian and the time 
was the first quarter of the seventeenth century, 
many of his jokes were coarse or indecent is not sur- 
prising, but there is ample testimony that they also 
had the flavour of genuine wit, for Tabarin 's say- 
ings were praised by such critics as Boileau, La 




A MOUNTEBANK OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



street Characters 275 

Fontaine, and Voltaire. Some of his ' ' works ' ' have 
survived ^ — broad farces and dialogues which have 
gone through many editions and been learnedly 
annotated by serious savants. The versatile 
'' barker " survived his retirement for some five 
years and had the pleasure of seeing his daughter 
married to one of the most popular comedians of the 
day. 

By the eighteenth century most of the other mod- 
erately open spaces of the city had been pre-empted 
by the successors of Tabarin. One picture of the 
time, for example, depicts a richly-attired mounte- 
bank haranguing a numerous crowd from a stand at 
the corner of the Place du Louvre. His scenic back- 
ground sets forth that he has been duly licensed by 
the police authorities, and indeed his air is wholly 
that of a man who has the law on his side. He wears 
the wig and three-cornered hat and brocaded coat 
and frills of the period, and while one hand clasps 
a formidable sword the other is raised in the easy 
gesture of the confident orator. A performing dog 
stands on its hind legs on his rostrum, and in the 
background his partner is offering for sale those 
articles for the exploitation of which the performing 
dog and the witticisms of the showman are but the 
accessories. The crowd is rapturously intent upon 
the proceedings, save for a street urchin in the fore- 
ground who is trying to make his dog emulate the 
feats of the canine on the rostrum. 



276 Old Paris 

Whatever amusement for the idle crowd was pur- 
veyed by these mountebanks, an ulterior motive of 
a mercenary character was ever in the background. 
Even the psalm-singer was no exception to the rule. 
As depicted by Charles Cochin, this entertainer of 
the streets used to provide himself with a curious 
structure which had the appearance of a double 
door, the inside panels of which were adorned with 
half a dozen sacred pictures. To these crude draw- 
ings the psalm-singer pointed in succession with a 
long wand while he was intoning the descriptive 
verses. Dressed in the simplest garb of the day, and 
with his own natural hair flowing over his shoulders, 
the singer affected a mien sufficiently pious to melt 
the most worldly heart, and his sanctified bearing 
was not without due effect on his hearers, if Cochin 
is to be trusted. But it was the love of lucre and not 
a passion for saving souls which prompted this seri- 
ous entertainment. One of the listeners is holding 
up a coin to the musical evangelist, a hint on the 
part of the artist that the psalmist is not above sell- 
ing copies of his pious ballads. 

How much more, then, did the mercenary motive 
lurk behind the vocal efforts of those other singers 
who dealt frankly with secular themes. His pictures 
were innocent of Old or New Testament inspira- 
tion, but depicted a ball, a wedding, a feast, a 
glimpse of royalty, or a new-year's festival. And 
as the pictures, such were the songs. The singer, 




THE PSALM - SINGER. 



street Characters 277 

too, affected the most worldly of costumes, and usu- 
ally had a companion who accompanied him on a 
musical instrument. 



" An elevated stand he takes, 
And to the fiddler's squeak, he makes 
A loud and entertaining lecture 
On every wonder-working picture : — 
The children cry, ' Hark! look at that! ' 
And folks put money in the hat; 
Or buy his papers that explain 
The stories they would hear again." 

Certain types of quacks persisted in the streets 
of Paris for many generations. The '' painless " 
dentist of Tabarin's day, for example, had his coun- 
terpart in that tooth-doctor of the mid-nineteenth 
century who extracted teeth for five sous each to the 
accompaniment of strident organ and drum, while 
the jugglers of the seventeenth century were worth- 
ily represented by that descendant who threw five 
and ten and twenty pennies some sixty feet into the 
air and made them adhere to each other and caught 
them in his waistcoat pocket. 

As the Parisians grew more utilitarian, however, 
the street character underwent a corresponding 
change. He had to offer something more than wit 
in exchange for the coin of the realm. And he found 
it necessary to specialize in some article which was 
not too costly, and, at the same time, was in general 



278 Old Paris 

use. This practical type of street character in Paris 
was exemplified by ^' I'illustre Mangin," the pencil- 
seller, who, as an orator, adequately sustained the 
traditions of Tabarin. He was said to have taken 
a university degree, a belief which may have had 
no surer foundation than his fondness for classical 
allusions, but whatever the extent of his learning 
there was no denying his fluency of speech. Unlike 
Tabarin, he did not confine himself to any one pitch 
in Paris, but paraded the various districts of the 
city in accordance with a fixed schedule, and had a 
specific day and hour for every quarter. Hence his 
cart with its organ and drum was a familiar object 
to all Parisians, as was also Mangin himself with his 
scarlet cloak and huge brass helmet crowned with 
an enormous bunch of black feathers. His style of 
oratory may be judged by this specimen: 

'' Ladies, gentlemen, children, enemies and 
friends ! Buy my pencils. There are no other pen- 
cils like them on the earth or in the spheres. Listen ! 
They are black ! You imagine, of course, in the im- 
mensity of your ignorance — it is wonderful how 
ignorant people are capable of being, especially 
about pencils — that all pencils are black. Error! 
Criminal error ! Error as immense and fatal as that 
of Mark Antony when he fell in love with Cleopatra. 
All other pencils are grey ! Mine alone possess the 
merit of being truly black." Notwithstanding that 
^nd other invaluable qualities, Mangin sold his pen- 



street Characters 279 

oils — and sold them in huge numbers — for a sou 
each or ten sous a dozen. 

Although the ghosts or descendants of many of 
the street characters of old Paris still haunt the 
city, there is one who has wholly disappeared. This 
is the man, generally well advanced in years, who 
presided in the little wooden booths which bore the 
legend, " Scrivain Public," that is, public letter- 
writer. His was a busy and profitable occupation in 
those bygone generations when the accomplishment 
of writing was not enjoyed by the majority, even 
though his rates were only five sous for an ordinary 
letter, or twelve sous for a petition to the king "be- 
cause it was necessary to make it more stylish." 
The letter-writer's booth was the secular confes- 
sional of Paris and rightly designated " The Tomb 
of Secrets." The occupant was no ordinary pen- 
man ; he could, on occasion, engross and scroll with 
the best, having a facile command of the various 
styles of handwriting suitable for the manifold ne- 
cessities of his numerous clients. He was, too, often 
a wooer of the muse, and could turn a sonnet to give 
added force to a confession of love. 
•^ One such vicarious penman has been described by 
a historian of Parisian byways. He sat behind his 
little desk, the image of Discretion in flesh and 
blood. " Curious to see everything, you ap- 
proached ; a few specimens of petitions to the Chief 
of the State, drawn up on official paper and sealed 



280 Old Paris 

with wafers, gave you a foretaste of the master *s 
dexterity. Moreover, you could read, in a position 
well exposed to view, some pieces of poetic inscrip- 
tion, deficient in neither rhyme nor even reason, and 
cleverly calculated to allure you forthwith. The 
running hand, the round hand, the English hand, 
and the Gothic hand alternated freely in the in- 
genious composition, not to mention the flourishings 
with which the lines ended, the page encased in or- 
namental spirals, the capitals complicated with 
arabesques, and so forth. This booth, a mere plank 
box, three feet square, whence issued during forty 
years an incalculable number of letters, petitions, 
and other documents, was situated in the quarter of 
Saint- Victor. " Others were to be found in many 
other districts, but they and their occupants have 
alike vanished, another sacrifice of the picturesque 
on the altar of education. 

But some human needs defy education and time 
alike. Hence many of the street characters depicted 
in the spirited drawings of B our char don have left 
descendants to this day. The gallery is well 
stocked, including the wood-cutter, the coffee-seller, 
the fishwoman, the water-carrier, the fruit and 
flower vendor, the street-cobbler, the broom mer- 
chant, the rat-catcher, the lottery tout, the knife- 
grinder, the chimney-sweep, the milkmaid, and many 
more. Some have disappeared and left no succes- 
sors, but the street cries of modern Paris are, to 



street Characters 281 

those who have ears to hear, full of suggestion of 
the past. 

For, although the Paris of ideas is always chan- 
ging and has a generous hospitality for what is new 
in thought, there is also a Paris of custom which is 
immemorially old and impervious to change. In 
nothing is that aspect of the French capital better 
represented than in its street characters and their 
centuries-old cries. These fill the day from dawn 
to dusk with such heraldings of their wares as have 
known no variation for countless generations. The 
Pied-Piper-like sound, for example, with which the 
goatherd of the city disturbs the silence of the 
dawn is not of the twentieth century but reminiscent 
of an age long passed away, and there are many 
other melodies — some musical and others not — 
which perpetuate the Paris of an earlier time. Even 
in the eighteenth century these street sounds were 
practically stereotyped. '' You hear," wrote a 
chronicler of that period, " shrill, piercing and 
deadening cries in every direction, as, for instance, 
' Live mackerel ! just arrived ! ' * Fresh herrings, 
fresh herrings! ' ' They are piping hot! ' (This 
referred to cakes quite cold.) Add to these cries 
those of the dealers in old clothes, the sellers of 
parasols, old iron, and water-carriers. The men 
cry like women and the women as if they were men. 
There is one perpetual yelling, and it is impossible 
to describe the sound and the accent of all these mul- 



282 Old Paris 

titudinous voices when they are raised in chorus." 
All things considered, then, and what with Tabarin 
and his tribe and the busy vendors of articles ran- 
ging from a broom to *' hot " cakes, the street life 
of old Paris was not lacking in animation and enter- 
tainment. 



CHAPTER X 

FAIRS AND PETES 

Reference has already been made to the fact that 
the first coffee-house to figure in the history of old 
Paris was that which Pascal the Armenian opened 
in 1672 as an attraction at the Fair of St. Germain. 
That incident is doubly suggestive: it shows that 
the booth-keepers of those annual gatherings were 
always on the alert for novelties, and that in an 
attempt to exploit the new drink, as in so many 
other ways, the Fair of St. Germain set the fashion 
for the rival Fair of St. Lawrence. 

But neither of those fairs, ancient though they 
were, could compete on the score of antiquity with 
the Fair of St. Denis. Among the countless charters 
of such institutions which have survived to modern 
times, by far the oldest is that by which Dagobert, 
king of the Franks, bestowed upon the monks of St. 
Denis the privilege of holding an annual market ' ' in 
honour of the Lord and to the glory of St. Denis at 
his festival. ' ' That charter belongs to the first half 
of the seventh century, and hence anticipates by five 
centuries the earliest reference to the Fair of St. 
Germain. 

As Dagobert, in addition to his devotion to the 

283 



284 Old Paris 

Church, was an enthusiastic patron of the arts, it 
was natural that the Fair of St. Denis should be dis- 
tinguished for its blend of religion and craftsman- 
ship. Each year, then, it was inaugurated by a 
procession of monks from the abbey which passed 
in stately pomp between the rows of stalls richly 
laden with the merchandise and handiwork of many 
nations. The fair lasted for ten days, dating from 
the day following the festival of the saint whose 
name it bore. Five centuries later another fair 
began to be held at St. Denis. It originated in 1109, 
when Notre Dame was presented with some frag- 
ments of the cross. So vast were the crowds which 
gathered to adore these relics that it was impossible 
to accommodate them in the cathedral, and hence 
they were taken to the plain of St. Denis, where 
there was room for all. From the repetition of this 
al fresco ceremony there at last came into existence 
the annual market known as the Feast of the Parch- 
ment, which was opened by a procession of students 
headed by the Rector of the University. Before 
the sales commenced the Rector instructed the mer- 
chants to reserve such a quantity of parchment as 
he estimated would be needed for the use of the 
University during the ensuing year; that duty ac- 
complished, the Rector retired, and the students then 
proceeded to disport themselves after the manner of 
their kind. No doubt those " young barbarians " 
were resourceful in providing congenial amusements 



Fairs and Petes 285 

for each other; at any rate it does not appear that 
the Feast of the Parchment was distinguished for 
those various side-shows which were so large a part 
of the attractions of the Fairs of St. Germain, St. 
Lawrence, and St. Ovide. 

Judging from such records as are still available, 
the oldest of these three was the Fair of St. Ger- 
main, of which the memory is perpetuated by that 
Marche St. Germain close to St. Sulpice. The earli- 
est authentic reference to the fair dates back to 1176, 
when, as in the case of St. Denis, the market was 
associated with the abbey after which it was named. 
Other records show that it was still in existence in 
1433, when it lasted for eighteen days. From that 
time, however, its observance seems to have been 
spasmodic, and it continued in a semi-comatose con- 
dition until in 1482 a permission to establish a new 
fair on the site of the gardens of the King of Na- 
varre was granted by Louis XI. But, for many 
years, there was no hard and fast rule as to the 
duration of each annual gathering ; it seems to have 
varied at the whim of the merchants who hired the 
stalls; and it was not until the eighteenth century 
that the fair was regularly opened on the third of 
February and as regularly closed on Passion Sun- 
day. 

Similar conditions prevailed in connection with 
the Fair of St. Lawrence, the earliest reference to 
which belongs to the year 1344. In the fourteenth 



286 Old Paris 

century and later it seems to have lasted for but a 
single day, but in the eighteenth century it was 
opened on the ninth of August and closed on the 
penultimate day of the following month. As with 
the Fairs of St. Denis and St. Germain, the Fair of 
St. Lawrence was originally connected with a relig- 
ious order. The site on which it was held is now 
occupied by the courtyard of the Gare de I'Est as is 
recorded on a commemorative tablet on a pavilion 
to the left of the station. 

But these fairs preserved their utilitarian char- 
acter for many generations, for it was not until near 
the close of the sixteenth century that the low come- 
dians, jugglers, and other entertainers began to 
make their appearance at those annual gatherings. 
When such wandering players were, in 1597, given 
authority to set up their booths and cater for the 
amusement of the crowd, the merchants who re- 
garded the fair from a purely commercial stand- 
point were doubtless alarmed for the future. They 
may have imagined that business and pleasure were 
incompatible. The history of fairs proves that the 
introduction of such alien features as plays or pup- 
pet-shows was at first strenuously resisted. But 
that opposition did not continue for long; the mer- 
chants quickly discovered that the mountebanks and 
strong men attracted ever-increasing crowds, and 
that the larger attendance was all for the good of 
trade. 



Fairs and Fetes 287 

By the middle of the seventeenth century, then, 
when a poet named Loret set himself the task of 
penning a rhyming catalogue of the curiosities to 
be seen at the Fair of St. Germain, the list of non- 
commercial attractions was of a formidable length. 
It included harlequins, tumblers, dancers, giants, 
monkeys, and wild animals. But Loret may be al- 
lowed to call the roll : 

" Citrons limonades, douceurs, 
Arlequins, santeurs et danseurs, 
Outre un geant dont la structure 
Est prodige de la nature; 
Outre les animaux sauvages, 
Outre cent et cent hatelages, 
Les Fagotins et less guenous, 
On voit un certain habile homme 
{Je ne sais comment on le nomme) 
Dont le travail industrieux 
Fait voir a tous les curieux, 
Non pas la figure d'H erodes, 
Mais du grand colosse de Rhodes 
Qu'd faire on a bein du temps mis, 
Les hauls murs de S emir amis, 
Oil cette reine fait la ronde; 
Bref, les sept merveilles du monde, 
Dont tres bien les yeux sont surpris; 
Ce que Von voit a juste prix." 

One of the earliest and most detailed descriptions 
of the aspect of the fair was penned by the zoologist 
Martin Lister, who visited Paris in 1698. *' We 
were in Paris," he wrote, " at the time of the Fair 



288 Old Paris 

of St. Germain. It lasts six weeks at least; the 
place where it is kept, well bespeaks its antiquity; 
for it is a very pit or hole, in the middle of the Fau- 
bourg, and belongs to the great abbey of that name. 
You descend into it on all sides, and in some places 
above twelve steps ; so that the city is raised above 
it six or eight feet. The building is a very barn, or 
frame of wood, tiled over ; consisting of many long 
alleys, crossing one another, the floor of the alleys 
unpaved, and of earth, and as uneven as may be: 
which makes it very uneasy to walk in, were it not 
the vast crowd of people which keep you up. But 
all this bespeaks its antiquity, and the rudeness of 
the first ages of Paris, which is a foil to its polite- 
ness in all things else now. The fair consists of 
most toy-shops, and Bartholomew-fair ware; also 
faience and pictures, joiner's work, linen and woolen 
manufactures; many of the great ribband shops 
remove out of Paris hither ; no books ; many shops 
of confectioners, where the ladies are commodiously 
treated. The great rendezvous is at night, after the 
play and opera are done ; and raffling for all things 
vendible is the great diversion; no shop wanting 
two or three raffling boards. Monsieur, the Dau- 
phin, and the other princes of the blood come at 
least once in the fair-time to grace it. Here are 
also coffee-shops, where that and all sorts of strong 
liquors are sold. Knavery here is in perfection as 
with us; as dexterous cut-purses and pick-pockets. 



Fairs and Fetes 289 

A pick-pocket came into the fair at night, extremely 
well-clad, with four lackeys with good liveries at- 
tending him: he was caught in the fact, and more 
swords were drawn in his defence than against him ; 
but yet he was taken, and delivered into the hands 
of justice, which is here sudden and no jest." 

That ' ' very barn, or frame of wood ' ' really com- 
prised two structures after the style of a couple of 
market-halls placed side by side, and the whole was 
divided into nine thoroughfares which were again 
intersected by twenty-four aisles. Most of the shops 
or booths had little store-rooms over them, and there 
were numerous wells dug here and there for use in 
case of fire. The various alleys took their names 
from the trades to which they were chiefly devoted. 

Although Dr. Lister does not appear to have been 
attracted by the harlequins and tumblers and dan- 
cers, there was one side show which as a zoologist 
he could not ignore. '' I was surprised," he said, 
'' at the impudence of a booth, which put out the 
pictures of some Indian beasts, with hard names; 
and of four that were painted, I found but two, and 
those very ordinary ones, viz., a leopard and a rac- 
coon. I asked the fellow why he deceived the peo- 
ple, and whether he did not fear cudgelling in the 
end: he answered with a singular confidence, that 
it was the painter's fault; that he had given the 
raccoon to paint to two masters, but both had mis- 
taken the beast; but however (he said) though the 



290 Old Paris 

pictures were not well designed, they did neverthe- 
less serve to grace the booth and bring him custom." 
Such an ingenious excuse ought to have placated 
the disappointed zoologist. He did see two animals 
for his money, whereas many a fair booth with an 
enticing picture outside offered nothing more than 
vacuity within. 

Had Dr. Lister visited the Fair of St. Germain 
a generation earlier he would have had an oppor- 
tunity of seeing something which would have left 
him more surprised than those misleading pictures 
of Indian beasts. At the fair of 1662 one of the 
booths was occupied by an organist from Troyes 
named Raisin who exhibited a most marvellous 
spinet. This instrument, which was of his own man- 
ufacture, had three keyboards, one of which re- 
peated such airs as were played on the other two, 
or even a different tune when commanded by Raisin. 
The performers were two of the organist's young 
children, who, when they had played an air on either 
of the nearest keyboards, were bidden to lift their 
hands from the keys, and then the third keyboard 
repeated at Raisin's request the tune heard a mo- 
ment before. Nor was that all. If the organist 
shouted, '' Stop, spinet! " the mysterious keyboard 
ceased to move; if he shouted, '' Go on, spinet! " it 
resumed the air where it had broken off; if he de- 
manded, " Play something else, spinet," the instru- 
ment at once obeyed. All the explanation Raisin 



Fairs and Fetes 291 

offered to his astonished patrons was to the effect 
that he had a spirit imprisoned in the instrument, 
and to add to the mystification he now and then 
made a pretence of winding up the spinet with a 
large key to the accompaniment of the sound of 
clacking wheels. Lest it should be imagined that 
the instrument was manipulated by some one hidden 
beneath in the floor of the booth, its position was 
frequently changed. 

This was a venture infinitely more profitable than 
organ-playing at Troyes, The wonderful spinet was 
the sensation of the fair ; Raisin's booth was packed 
to the doors at every performance ; and for practi- 
cal result the organist found himself the richer by 
some twenty thousand livres. And then the king, 
Louis XIV, commanded an exhibition of the mar- 
vellous instrument, which was accordingly taken to 
the court and as much admired by royalty and 
courtiers as by its patrons at the fair. "When the 
performance was over, however, the king ordered 
the case of the instrument to be opened, and all the 
mystery was cleared up by the emergence of the 
youngest and smallest of Raisin's musically accom- 
plished children ! That ' ' spirit ' ' of the spinet 
became a popular actor in later life. 

Many a player on the French stage, indeed, re- 
ceived his or her earliest training in one or other of 
the great fairs of Paris. In the seventeenth cen- 
tury, for example, there were the brothers Charles 



292 Old Paris 

and Pierre Alard who graduated as low comedians 
at both St. Germain and St. Lawrence before play- 
ing in comedy at the regular theatres. Charles 
Alard, however, preferred the fair environment to 
the more respectable atmosphere of the '' legiti- 
mate ' ' theatre, and died of a fall which he met while 
performing at the Fair of St. Lawrence ; Pierre, on 
the other hand, ended his chequered career as a fake 
dentist. 

Judging from the playbills and other old records 
so industriously gathered together by ;^mile Cam- 
perdon in his " Les Spectacles de la Foire," the 
Fair of St. Germain was at the height of its glory 
about the middle of the eighteenth century. Each of 
the years during the decade dating from 1740 was 
distinguished by the advent of some notable per- 
former or the production of some bewildering nov- 
elty. The former included Nicolini Grimaldi, the 
grandfather of the famous clown of that name, and 
Jean Baptiste Nicolet, who began his successful ca- 
reer as the director of a marionette show. Grimaldi, 
who was described as an English tumbler and tight- 
rope dancer of Italian origin, and was given the 
expressive title of " Iron-leg," seems to have had 
many accomplishments and was a great ' ' draw ' ' at 
the fairs of 1740 and the following year. Among 
the notables who were attracted by his fame was the 
Turkish ambassador, whose presence in the audience 
so exhilarated Grimaldi that he wagered a fellow 



Fairs and Fetes 293 

performer that he would jump as high as the chan- 
deliers. He won his bet, but he struck the chandelier 
with such force as to knock off one of its branches, 
which fell full on the face of the Turkish minister. 

Wild animals and ingenious automatons figured 
largely among the other novelties of that flourishing 
decade. The former included two strange beasts 
exploited by a showman named Billard whose elo- 
quent announcement was rich in startling adjectives. 
And that showman was equally copious in dwelling 
upon his own unrivalled accomplishments as a math- 
ematician and juggler. His high-flown periods were 
successfully imitated by the exhibitor of a wonder- 
ful rhinoceros, hitherto thought to be an " apocry- 
phal animal," by the owner of a pelican, " a rare 
bird from Turkey " which bled itself to nourish its 
young, and by the showman who solicited patronage 
for his marvellous chameleon. The latter was ex- 
hibited in a kind of cage with six arcades, in each 
of which was a coloured moving-figure. The chame- 
leon paused before each figure in turn, at once as- 
suming the hue of that before which it halted. 

Some of the automatons were well calculated to 
amuse the easily pleased Parisian. One exhibitor ■ 
in 1749 displayed three separate figures, the first 
being a country woman with a pigeon on her head 
and a glass in her hand. On the payment of a stip- 
ulated coin, the glass was raised to the beak of the 
bird, which emitted red or white wine at the choice 



294 Old Paris 

of the patron. The second piece of mechanism rep- 
resented a grocer's shop, and the man behind the 
counter handed out such of his wares as were de- 
manded. The third was a figure of a Moor, who, 
with a hammer in one hand and a ball in the other, 
played such tunes as were called for. At the same 
fair there was a rival attraction entitled ^' Specta- 
cle Hydraulique, " which, among other marvels, dis- 
played a lantern of water with a lighted candle in 
the centre. 

About a dozen years later the theatre of all these 
wonders was overtaken by a serious catastrophe. 
Sterne was in Paris at the time, and, in a letter to 
his wife, described the event in his usual sentimental 
style. '' A terrible fire happened here last night, 
the whole Fair of St. Germain's burned to the 
ground in a few hours; and hundreds of unhappy 
people are now going crying along the streets, 
ruined totally by it. This Fair of St. Germain's is 
built upon a spot of ground covered and tiled, as 
large as the Minster Yard, entirely of wood, divided 
into shops, and formed into little streets, like a 
town in miniature. All the artizans in the kingdom 
come with their wares — jewellers, silversmiths, — 
and have free leave from all parts of the world to 
profit by a general license from the carnival to 
Easter. They compute the loss at six millions of 
livres, which these poor creatures have sustained, 
not one of which have saved a single shilling, and 



Fairs and Fetes 295 

many fled out in their shirts, and have not only lost 
their goods and merchandise, but all the money they 
have been taking these six weeks. ' Oh! ces mo- 
ments de malheur sont terribles,' said my barber 
to me, as he was shaving me this morning; and the 
good-natured fellow uttered it with so moving an 
accent, that I could have found in my heart to have 
cried over the perishable and uncertain tenure of 
every good in this life. ' ' It was in March, 1762, that 
Sterne was so moved by his barber's exclamation, 
and hence the conflagration took place near the close 
of the fair for that year. During the intervening 
twelve months a new building was erected, but, al- 
though the galleries were of a more elegant type, 
and despite the added attractions of a dancing- 
saloon and a miniature Vauxhall, the fire of 1762 
materially decreased the repute in which the Fair 
of St. Germain had been held for so many genera- 
tions. Thenceforward it steadily declined in popu- 
lar favour, and a year or so before the outbreak of 
the Revolution it was finally abandoned. 

Most of the attractions at the Fair of St. Law- 
rence were of a nature greatly akin to those on view 
at its winter rival ; if the summer fair had a distinct 
character of its own it consisted in the difference 
that it seemed able to boast a larger number of fe- 
male performers of dubious reputation. Of course it 
also had its share of impositions, including the mar- 
vellous " Homme a Deux Tetes," who would have 



296 Old Paris 

surprised Dr. Lister more than those Indian beasts, 
for this wonder of nature appears to have been noth- 
ing more than a wooden figure adorned with a super- 
fluous head. It was an early example, in short, of 
those " sells " for which fairs are famous. 

Perhaps, however, the regular patrons of the St. 
Lawrence festival gladly condoned such deceptions 
as the two-headed man in view of the many graceful- 
limbed and accommodating females engaged by the 
management. There was Gertrude Boon, for ex- 
ample, " the beautiful tumbler," whose well-turned 
legs and seductive figure played such havoc with the 
amorous feelings of a wealthy youth that he married 
her in haste and as quickly tired of his bargain. 
Gertrude, however, was not loath to return to the 
scene of her triumphs, where she doubtless made 
many more conquests of an equally profitable but 
less legally binding nature. Then there 'was Marie 
Lebrun, who seems to have had a small army of ad- 
mirers, elderly and juvenile. Marie was nothing 
more than a dancer, and an ordinary dancer at that, 
for she confessed that her salary was inadequate to 
pay her dress and cafe bills ; but she was young and 
blooming and complaisant. Voild tout! On occa- 
sion, however, Marie could play the chaste virgin 
with the best. One elderly admirer, Chedeville by 
name, pursued her with tropical letters and offer- 
ings of silk stockings, but, according to her story in 
the police-court, she tore up his epistles and scorned 



Fairs and Fetes 297 

his contributions to her wardrobe. So far as lan- 
guage went, Marie's examination by the custodians 
of the law was distinctly to her advantage as com- 
pared with the choice and unprintable expressions 
credited under similar conditions to Mile. Armand, 
another of the sirens of the Fair of St. Lawrence. 

But it would be unjust to leave the impression 
that the famous summer fair of old Paris was noth- 
ing more than a happy hunting-ground for the roue. 
Apart from the serious trade carried on in pic- 
tures, pottery, all kinds of fabrics, and the prod- 
ucts of the goldsmith, it did not fail to cater for 
those interested in the curiosities of science and 
physical illusion. The ' ' Palais Magique ' ' exhibited 
one year offered a large assortment of mysterious 
tricks and clever mechanical toys, while the " No- 
veau Spectacles de Physique " of a subsequent sea- 
son included many ingenious automatons. There 
was the " Sympathetic Lamp," for example, a two- 
branched affair which extinguished either of its 
lights in unison with the putting out of either of a 
couple of lighted candles held at a distance of from 
thirty to sixty paces. Another novelty was a musket 
which a member of the audience was allowed to cock 
and which, when laid upon a table, snapped its trig- 
ger at any moment previously decided upon. There 
was, too, an early example of the thought-reading 
automaton. Neither these wonders, however, nor 
the alluring Gertrudes and Maries were able to pre- 



298 Old Paris 

vent the Fair of St. Lawrence sharing the fate of its 
winter competitor. 

Even had the Eevolution not proved fatal to those 
fairs, the changing conditions of the late eighteenth 
century were not conducive to the preservation of 
institutions which belonged essentially to an earlier 
type of social life. For it must not be forgotten that 
the entertainments which are the most picturesque 
features of the fairs of old Paris were, after all, noth- 
ing more than the word ^ ' sideshows ' ' suggests, that 
is, shows on the side and mere accretions to the seri- 
ous business of selling and buying. In the lawless 
days of earlier centuries, and when means of com- 
munication and transport were scanty and ineffi- 
cient, the fair held an important place in the life of 
a community by providing a yearly opportunity of 
replenishing wardrobes or household stores, and 
hence it was bound to decline when commerce be- 
came more carefully organized and permanent shops 
supplanted temporary booths. 

All that accounts for the fact that the effort to 
establish a third great fair in Paris was made too 
late to be rewarded with enduring success. The ef- 
fort in question was made in 1764, when, during the 
month of August, Parisians were bidden to the new 
Fair of St. Ovide, which was set up in that part of 
the city then known as the Place Louis le Grand but 
now familiar as the Place Vendome. Judging from 
an old print, the organizers of the Fair of St. Ovide 



Fairs and Fetes 299 

set out with the resolve to cater for amusement 
, rather than business. The picture does, it is true, 
represent a number of small tradesmen's booths in 
the background, but the prominence given to a cafe 
and a billiard saloon and the commanding propor- 
tions accorded to the theatres of Gaudon and Nico- 
let are conclusive that the fair was consecrated to 
pleasure and not commerce. 

Two such popular entertainers as Jean Baptiste 
Nicolet and Claude Pierre Gaudon ought to have 
ensured generous patronage for the fair, for the 
former could count upon the favour of Louis XV 
and the latter was at one time the most-discussed 
man in Paris. Gaudon, who began life as a painter, 
no sooner took to the show business than he realized 
the importance of exploiting persons who were in 
the public eye. In pursuit of that policy he made an 
effort to secure for his theatre at the Fair of St. 
Ovide no less a public character than the popular 
Eamponeau, whose famous al fresco tavern has been 
described in a previous chapter. Eamponeau lis- 
tened favourably to Gaudon 's proposals and actu- 
ally accepted a sum of money in advance of the pay- 
ment he was to receive. But, at the last moment, he 
backed out of the engagement; he had '' religious 
scruples," he said, against appearing in a theatre. 
Gaudon must have smiled grimly at the idea of an 
inn-keeper being afflicted with '' religious scruples," 
and accepted his disappointment philosophically; 



300 Old Paris 

but when Ramponeau's " religious scruples " al- 
lowed him to make an appearance at another theatre, 
Gaudon thought it was time to put the law in action. 
The case was the talk of Paris; even Voltaire en- 
tered the lists on behalf of the pious Ramponeau; 
and the upshot was that the tavern-keeper was con- 
demned to return the money he had pocketed prior 
to the development of his " religious scruples." 

Naturally all that agitation and discussion was to 
the good of Gaudon and the Fair of St. Ovide. But 
in a few years the effect of that publicity died away, 
and by 1772 the fair seems to have been reduced to 
what was called the ^' Cafe des Nj^mphes " as its 
chief attraction. Notwithstanding the title, that 
cafe appears to have been a tame affair, for the prin- 
cipal amusement offered its patrons was nothing 
more than a gallery of young women arrayed in gar- 
ments which were intended to caricature the fash- 
ions of the day. Perhaps, then, it is hardly 
surprising that popular interest in the Fair of 
St. Ovide gradually waned and finally ceased al- 
together. 

', It may have been that the matter of expense had 
something to do with the decay of Parisian fairs. 
According to the testimony of a native of the city 
the Parisian has always been economical in his 
amusements. " Where an Englishman," said this 
witness, '' would readily have paid his guinea, the 
Parisian thought twice before he laid out a few 



Fairs and Fetes 301 

pieces of silver. What he delighted in most of all 
were gratuitous amusements, such as were to be had 
on public festivals. To take part in them, he did 
not regard fatigue or loss of time. In rain, wind, or 
dust, he would tramp from one end of the city to 
the other, and stand for hours to see the illumina- 
tions, fireworks, and other amusements." He was, 
in fact, demoralized for many centuries by the free 
entertainments of the numerous fetes which distin- 
guished the life of old Paris. 

To do justice to those fetes would be impossible 
save in a substantial volume. For to catalogue them 
all would mean writing the religious and commercial 
history of the city. As in the case of the fairs, it 
was the Church which took the lead in arranging 
street spectacles, to be followed by the trade guilds 
and the state authorities. By the middle of the 
eighteenth century the fete days appointed by the 
church had grown so numerous that Voltaire drew 
up a protest in the interest of social economy. 
'' Twenty fete days too many in the country," he 
wrote, " condemn to inactivity and expose to dissi- 
pation twenty times a year ten millions of working- 
men, each of whom would earn five pence a day, and 
this gives a total of 180,000,000 livres lost to the 
state in the course of a twelve-month. This painful 
fact is beyond all doubt." Voltaire might have 
given further point to his indictment by directing 
attention to the nearly two hundred trade corpora- 



302 Old Paris 

tions, each with its patron-saint who was celebrated 
by a fete at least once a year. 

There were the cobblers, for example, who seem to 
have held their annual festival on the unorthodox 
date of the first of August. As they called them- 
selves merely the '^ Society of the Trade of Cob- 
blers," it may be that the honourable shoe-makers 
would not permit them to celebrate on the regular 
St. Crispin day. However, the cobblers had their 
procession all the same, bravely decked out no 
doubt, and perhaps as picturesque as any which 
wended its way through the streets of old Paris. 
The artist who perpetuated the fete of 1641 did not 
attempt a picture of the street scene or the cere- 
mony in church without which no occasion of that 
kind was deemed complete ; he confined his graphic 
labours to depicting the tavern interior where the 
day's proceeding culminated. The text of this 
broadside conveys the information that the cobblers 
dined sumptuously on turnip-soup, ox-feet, tripe, 
and " cow beef," but, judging from the picture, 
whatever may have been lacking in viands was am- 
ply compensated by the supply of liquids, for the 
serving-man who is replenishing the wine-cups from 
a huge bottle has a reserve of three other receptacles 
just as large to fall back upon. In the background, 
too, the crowded condition of the blackboard on 
which the tavern-keeper is chalking up the score is 
additional evidence that the cobblers were thirsty 



Fairs and Fetes 303 

clients. These realistic details enable one to appre- 
ciate that story of the cobbler who, when picking 
up a drunken man out of the gutter on a week day, 
exclaimed, '' And to think that I shall be in this 
state on Sunday! " 

Stately as were the processions arranged by the 
Church and picturesque as were the celebrations of 
the trade guilds, the most elaborate fetes, especially 
in the eighteenth century, were those given in con- 
nection with royal births, betrothals, and marriages. 

As Paul Lacroix wrote, the Parisians highly 
prized those inexpensive amusements. ^'^ They did 
not even care so much for the gratuitous distribu- 
tion of wine and eatables as for the illuminations 
and fireworks. The tocsin of Notre Dame, sounded 
day and night for twenty-four hours, invited to the 
festival, so to speak, the inhabitants of Paris. In 
addition to the celebration of the king's fete day, 
which was kept with the same rejoicings year after 
year, there were special ceremonies given in connec- 
tion with christenings and other occurrences asso- 
ciated with the royal family. Sometimes the Paris- 
ians were treated to a festival by a private indi- 
vidual, and, in May, 1722, the Due d'Ossuna, ambas- 
sador of Spain, gave illuminations and fireworks 
which cost nearly forty thousand dollars in honour 
of the betrothal of the Infanta to Louis XV. There 
were a hundred illuminated boats, each with a band 
of music in it, rowing up and down the Seine. Bar- 



304 Old Paris 

bier says that ' no such crowd was ever assembled 
before in one place.' " Some twenty years later 
the makers of fireworks were given special permis- 
sion to celebrate St. Louis' day with a grand dis- 
play, but the experiment had to be abandoned as 
unprofitable owing to the objection of the Parisians 
to paying for what they had been accustomed to 
enjoy free of cost. 

Among the royal fetes of the second half of the 
eighteenth century the most splendid was that given 
in honour of the marriage of Marie Antoinette. It 
even eclipsed the festival which had marked the 
wedding of Louis XA^'s eldest son, when twelve 
huge pavilions were erected in as many districts of 
the city and adorned with tropical plants and flow- 
ers to provide suitable guest-rooms in which to re- 
gale all comers with music and refreshments. 

From the hour when Marie Antoinette crossed the 
border of France her progress to the capital was 
marked at every stage by popular rejoicings. Her 
fresh young beauty captured all hearts. Field la- 
bourers left their toil to line the country roads along 
which she passed ; villages and towns reared trium- 
phal arches in her honour; the streets were strewn 
with flowers ; and everywhere bands of maidens 
dressed in white awaited her coming with garlands 
of spring blossoms. " Madame," stammered a 
country cure who had forgotten his carefully pre- 
pared address, '^ do not be surprised at my want of 



Fairs and Fetes 305 

memory: you are fair and beautiful." And when 
Paris was reached at last, and the marriage was 
over, and the radiant young bride showed herself 
to the cheering crowds on the balcony of the Hotel 
de Ville, the old Marshal de Brissac, pointing to the 
sea of humanity below, said with courtly grace : 
'^ Madame, the Dauphin may well be jealous. You 
behold before you two hundred thousand persons in 
love with you." 

For the climax of all these rejoicings there was 
arranged a fireworks display of unprecedented 
grandeur. But what was intended to be a spectacle 
of unrivalled magnificence was suddenly changed 
into a scene of horror. The scheme of the fireworks 
was so vast that the engineer in charge was unequal 
to the control of its various parts; one section of 
rockets got entirely out of hand and began explo- 
ding directly onto the dense crowds without a mo- 
ment's warning. Now, it so happened, that two of 
the thoroughfares off the Place Louis XV, where the 
exhibition was given, were blocked up, leaving only 
one narrow street for the escape of the frenzied mob. 
That street was quickly made impassable by a seeth- 
ing mass of humanity. " The confusion increased 
to such a degree, ' ' wrote a contemporary chronicler, 
'' that one trampled over another, till the people 
lay one upon another in heaps ; those who were un- 
dermost, stabbed those who lay above them, in 
order to disengage themselves. The pick-pockets 



306 Old Paris 

and robbers availed themselves of the confusion; 
and many ladies had their ear-rings torn out of 
their ears. A scaffold, erected near the palace of 
Bourbon, broke down with the over-weight of the 
spectators, who all fell into the river. There have 
been already taken up above a hundred drowned at 
St. Cloud, but many bodies have been driven beyond 
that place. The carnage was dreadful. It is com- 
puted that not less than three thousand are either 
killed, wounded, or rendered cripples for the re- 
mainder of their days." Happily that estimate 
proved to be an exaggeration, but the loss of life 
was sufficiently great to suggest the advisability of 
prohibiting future fetes of a like character. 

Twenty years later, however, all memory of that 
catastrophe had completel)^ faded from the Parisian 
mind. And, indeed, enough had happened in the in- 
terval to obliterate the recollection of an even 
greater disaster. For on the pages of the history 
of France there had been engrossed those records 
which told of the convocation of the notables, the 
struggle between king and Parliament, the evolution 
of the National Assembly, the fall of the Bastille, 
the drafting of a new constitution, and the agree- 
ment that all France should bind itself together 
again in a new oath of loyalty. 

What could be more legitimate excuse for an- 
other fete, and this time a fete without parallel in 
the history of the world? And for such a fete what 



Fairs and Fetes 307 

date was so fitting as the anniversary of the day on 
which the Bastille was overthrown? 
"^ And so it was agreed that on the 14th of July of 
that year 1790 all France should be summoned to a 
monster festival to celebrate " the birth of free- 
dom." The Champ de Mars, that spacious plain 
facing the Ecole Militaire which had hitherto been 
devoted to the reviews of troops and other military 
manoeuvres, was chosen as the scene of the gather- 
ing, and invitations were sent to the eighty-four de- 
partments of the country, to the members of the 
National Assembly, and to the National Guard to 
assemble on the appointed day and take the oath of 
loyalty to the new constitution. 

Even the preparation of the Champ de Mars for 
that notable occasion partook of the nature of a 
fete. It was a huge undertaking to transform that 
field of war into an amphitheatre for four hundred 
thousand spectators. The plain was more than half 
a mile in length and about two-thirds of a mile wide, 
and as the day for the fete drew near it seemed im- 
possible that the thirty tiers of seats could be ex- 
cavated and covered with timber in good time for 
the ceremony. Besides, there were stands to be 
erected for royalty and other high personages, and 
in the centre of the plain there had to be reared that 
mammoth Altar of the Fatherland whereon the 
oath of loyalty was to be sworn. The fifteen thou- 
sand hired labourers were slow at their task and re- 



308 Old Paris 

fused to work over-time. At their rate of work the 
arena could not possibly be finished for the ap- 
pointed day. 

But at that crisis a frenzy of good-will took pos- 
session of the Parisians. The project should not 
fail for lack of workers. One afternoon, then, when 
the hired workmen ceased their labours for the day, 
their spades and barrows were seized by hundreds 
of waiting patriots who continued industriously 
digging and wheeling until night fell. This example 
was infectious ; the next and following days all un- 
occupied Paris poured out to the Champ de Mars. 
' ' As many as one hundred and fifty thousand work- 
ers ; nay at certain seasons, as some count, two hun- 
dred and fifty thousand ; for, in the afternoon espe- 
cially, what mortal but, finishing his hasty day's 
work, would run! A stirring city: from the time 
you reach the Place Louis-Quinze, southward over 
the river, by all avenues, it is one living throng. So 
many workers; and no mercenary mock-workers, 
but real ones that lie freely to it: each Patriot 
stretches himself against the stubborn glebe; hews 
and wheels with the whole weight that is in him." 
And thus the Champ de Mars, with its thirty tiers 
of seats and its gigantic Altar of the Fatherland, is 
ready betimes for the great day. 

With the dawn of July fourteen all Paris was 
astir. The vast spaces of the arena were soon filled 
to overflowing by joyous crowds in holiday garb, and 



Fairs and Fetes 309 

meantime, at seven o'clock, near the tumbled ruins 
of the Bastille, the procession of the chief actors was 
marshalled into order and started for the Champ de 
Mars. The deputies from the departments, the na- 
tional guards, the members of the assembly, the rep- 
resentatives of the army, with presidents and elec- 
tors, made an imposing pageant thirty thousand 
strong, which passed through the decorated streets 
with banners flying and to the strains of inspiriting 
music. 

\ In the Champ de Mars the fete resolved itself into 
a spectacle unique for colour and movement. But 
the chief interest of the day centred on the Altar 
of the Fatherland, at the foot of which stood a 
model of the overthrown Bastille. To this altar, 
after the celebration of high mass by Talleyrand and 
two hundred priests clad in tricolour robes, there 
came Lafayette, as commander of the national 
guards, to swear, with uplifted sword, this oath of 
loyalty: " We swear to be faithful to the nation, to 
the law, to the king ; to maintain with all our might 
the constitution decreed by the National Assembly, 
and accepted by the king; and to remain united to 
all the French by the indissoluble bonds of frater- 
nity." After Talleyrand came the president of the 
assembly, and, last of all, the king and queen. And 
the rolling of drums, the clash of arms, the shouts 
of human throats, and the roar of many cannon pro- 
claimed that the chief ceremony of the Fete of Fed- 



310 Old Paris 

eration had been accomplished. So frenzied was the 
rejoicing that those four hundred thousand little 
heeded the sudden summer storm which at that mo- 
ment swept over the Champ de Mars and drenched 
them to the skin. 

Besides, there were other days and festivities to 
follow. For five days the fete was prolonged, with 
jousting on the Seine, sumptuous banquets, and, to 
conclude all, a wild orgy of public dancing and mer- 
riment round the Bastille and in the Champs ^\j- 
sees. 

Five and twenty months later the ruins of the 
Bastille witnessed the opening scenes of another 
fete notable in the annals of old Paris. Many 
changes had taken place in the interval, chief among 
them being the deposition of Louis XVI and his ex- 
ecution. It was the former event, however, the over- 
throw of the monarchy on the Tenth of August of 
the previous year, which it was decided to celebrate 
on the same date of 1793. And that festival was to 
signalize the acceptance by the people of France of 
the latest constitution designed by the revolution- 
ary leaders. 

As with so many other fetes of those turbulent 
days, the arrangements for the festival of the tenth 
of August were committed to the care of the artist 
Jacques Louis David, who is probably better remem- 
bered to-day for his portrait of Madame Eecamier 
than for his strenuous labours as designer-in-chief 



Fairs and Fetes 311 

of the pageants of the Eevolution. Not only did he 
design the details of the spectacle ; he set the time- 
table for the day's proceedings. '' All Frenchmen," 
he stipulated, " who wish to celebrate the Festival 
of Unity and Indivisibility will rise before the dawn, 
so that the touching scene of their gathering may be 
illumined by the sun's first rays." As already indi- 
cated, the venue of that '^ touching scene " was the 
site of the Bastille, the ruins of which were gener- 
ously decorated with placards bearing pathetic quo- 
tations from the laments of those who had been im- 
prisoned in that fortress. Amid the ruins of the 
prison stood a fountain in the form of a colossal 
statue of Nature, from each of whose breasts there 
poured a stream of water as symbolical of nature's 
fecundity. 

To this fountain Herault-Sechelles, the chief ora- 
tor of the day, addressed a grandiloquent apostro- 
phe, afterwards filling an agate goblet from one of 
its jets and sprinkling therewith the pedestal of the 
statue. But the occasion demanded from the voluble 
Sechelles a greater sacrifice than that, nothing less, 
in short, than that he fill the goblet again and drink 
its contents. Now Sechelles, as has been seen in an 
earlier chapter, preferred the wine of Chantilly at 
sixty francs a bottle, and a goblet of mere water 
must have been a nauseous draught. However, it 
had to be swallowed as part of the day's pro- 
ceedings, and eighty-four deputies were obliged 



312 Old Paris 

to imitate that example of momentary temper- 
ance. 

When the water-drinking had ended the proces- 
sion set out on its progress to the Champ de Mars 
making four halts on the way. David had exercised 
all his ingenuity to make the parade worthy of the 
occasion, designing a banner on which was printed 
the Eye of Vigilance piercing a black cloud, provi- 
ding an ark for the constitution, thrusting in the 
hands of deputies bunches of corn and fruit, linking 
the delegates in chains of tricolour ribbon, assign- 
ing white cradles to the babies from the Foundling 
Hospital, and paying special attention to that tum- 
brel which was laden with such emblems of royalty 
as imitation thrones, crowns, escutcheons, and the 
like. The latter were destined for a holocaust, for 
when the Place de la Revolution was reached, where 
the statue of Louis XV had been replaced by a plas- 
ter effigy of Liberty, the symbols of royalty were 
piled in a heap and set fire to by Sechelles to the ac- 
companiment of another turgid apostrophe. The 
fete concluded late at night with the inevitable ban-, 
quet and the usual promiscuous orgy of singing and 
dancing. 

Many other fetes figure in the annals of the 
French Revolution. The National Convention, as 
Edmond Bire remarked, understood that the people 
were ready to forgive anything in those who amused 
them. Many of those spectacles were blasphemous 



Fairs and Fetes 313 

and most of them licentious. Whatever their pomp 
in daylight, they, like " the holy Fair " of Burns 
culminated at night in " haughmagandie. " Human 
history has hardly recorded a more scandalous event 
than the Fete of Eeason, the apotheosis of an ac- 
tress of dubious reputation first in the hall of the 
Convention and then on the altar of Notre Dame. 
" Other mysteries," as Carlyle said, " seemingly of 
a Cabiric or even Paphian character " are best left 
in the obscurity of history. Hardly less revolt- 
ing was Kobespierre's Fete of the Supreme Being, 
which prompted one honest soul to exclaim, " With 
thy ' Supreme Being ' thou beginnest to be a bore 
to me." 

Even death itself was made a festival in those un- 
balanced times. Hence the bodies of Lepeletier and 
Marat were carried to their graves amid Davidian 
spectacles. The painter seems to have gloated over 
the artistic pose in which he found the body of ' ' the 
Friend of the People," and so that body was shown 
in state in all its hideous nakedness and disease. 
Remembering, however, how swiftly one after an- 
other the revolutionary leaders plotted to send each 
other to the guillotine, it becomes necessary to seri- 
ously discount their oratorical laments for Lepele- 
tier and Marat. They are too reminiscent of the 
scene which took place at the funeral of Murger. 
Speeches were to be made at the grave by Thierry 
and Maquet, and the mourners could not fail to no- 



314 Old Paris 

tice that the two orators were gesticulating and talk- 
ing to each other in an unusually animated manner. 
It was taken for granted that they were vying with 
each other in politeness, but the illusion was shat- 
tered when Maquet was heard to exclaim, " If you 
insist on speaking first I'll chuck you down the 
hole! " 



CHAPTER XI 

THE THEATRES 

What is true of French literature, namely, that 
any sketch which ignores the drama overlooks what 
is almost the soul of that literature, would be equally 
true of any account of the festive life of old Paris 
which failed to include at least a brief history of 
the theatres. 

In such a summary it is not necessary to dwell at 
length upon the part played by the church in the 
evolution of the drama. That there was a close con- 
nection between the religious pageant and the secu- 
lar stage has been well established, although it is 
often overlooked that the antagonism which event- 
ually sprang up between the clerics and actors in 
Paris was merely a reversion to the attitude which 
characterized the early church. The history of the 
conflict, indeed, provides another illustration of the 
facility with which the church has always adapted 
itself to the trend of secular thought when the ne- 
cessity arose. 

So far, then, as the origin of the theatre in Paris 
is concerned, the year 1402 may be taken as the real 
starting-point, especially as it was at that date the 
first playhouse was established. That momentous 

315 



316 Old Paris 

innovation has to be placed to the credit of an ama- 
teur organization known as the Confrerie de la Pas- 
sion, a society of artesan citizens drawing its mem- 
bership from masons, locksmiths, carpenters and 
other skilled workmen. Earlier still, of course, the 
guilds of the various trades had performed myster- 
ies as a feature of their annual celebrations ; but the 
Brethren of the Passion seem to have been the first 
society which existed for the sole purpose of giving 
such spectacles. In the absence of any definite in- 
formation, it may fairly be assumed that the society 
owed its existence to those enthusiastic performers 
in all the guilds who were not content with mere an- 
nual opportunities to display their dramaturgic ac- 
complishments. They were neither the first nor the 
last dilettantes who have been lured to the profes- 
sional footlights by success as amateurs. 

Having devised a new Mystery of the Passion, 
which was to be spoken and not merely mimed, the 
Brethren arranged to present it regularly on Sun- 
days and holy days. But at the start they were en- 
countered by an unexpected obstacle. Encouraged 
by some sympathetic friends, they secured a hall in 
the village of Saint-Maur, but the authorities were 
so alarmed at this new departure that they inter- 
vened and prohibited the performances. Several 
years later the Brethren of the Passion appealed to 
Charles VI, and that monarch had been so enter- 
tained by their Mystery that he promptly issued an 



The Theatres 317 

edict authorizing them to present it as often as they 
liked. Armed with such a document, the Brethren 
at once began looking around for a suitable building 
in which to establish themselves, and they discovered 
a place to their liking in the hall connected with the 
Hopital de la Trinite, close to the Porte St. Denis. 
In the hall of that hospice, then, the first Parisian 
stage was erected in 1402. 

Of course it was not a secular stage. The reper- 
toire of the Brethren was restricted to that Mystery 
which had so perturbed the puritans of Saint-Maur, 
and when they enlarged its contents it was in har- 
mony with that type of religious drama. Besides, 
their scenic equipment was of a kind suitable only 
for such plays. The stage was constructed in three 
tiers, the lowest representing Hell, the second Pales- 
tine, and the third Paradise. On the latter, the high- 
est of the three, stood a throne occupied by an actor 
who represented the Creator; the middle section 
was given up to angels and devils, who were in per- 
petual conflict; on the lowest tier was a dragon's 
mouth as the symbol of the underworld. Many of 
the speeches were chanted to organ accompaniment, 
but the greater part of the dialogue was spoken in 
the manner of modern stage declamation. The cen- 
tre of action varied from time to time between the 
three tiers, and those players not immediately en- 
gaged sat round in full view of the audience. Prac- 
tically the only comedy relief in the Mystery was 



318 Old Paris 

provided by the actor impersonating Satan, who was 
allowed to indulge in buffoonery to his heart's con- 
tent. All this may not seem exhilarating to the 
modern playgoer, but in fifteenth-century Paris the 
enterprise of the Brethren proved exceedingly pop- 
ular, as it was countenanced by the priests of the 
church, who went so far as to so re-arrange their 
hours of service that their congregation might be 
free to attend the performances at the Hopital de 
la Trinite. 

So popular, indeed, were the performances of the 
Brethren that it was not long before they were paid 
the compliment of imitation. During the first half 
of the fifteenth century, then, there came into exist- 
ence two other dramatic societies, which played a 
notable part in the development of the Parisian 
theatre. The first of these was founded by the 
Clercs de la Basoche, that is, the guild of lawyers' 
clerks; the second by a band of bourgeois youths 
who assumed the name of Les Enfants Sans-Souci. 

As may be inferred from the occupation of the 
first and the name of the second, neither the Baso- 
chians nor the Care-free Children were likely to 
compete with the Brethren in their own particular 
line. Nor did they. The Basochians and the Care- 
free Children struck out a path for themselves. 
The former, then, specialized in the production of 
Moralities and Farces; the latter introduced what 
was called the " Sotie," that is, a kind of comedy 



The Theatres 319 

of manners, or a play in which political satire pre 
dominated. In one respect the Basochians had, for 
a time, the better of their rivals ; as members of the 
powerful legal guild they had the right to use the 
hall of the Palace of Justice for their performances, 
whereas the Care-free Children had to present their 
plays in the markets. By and by, however, the 
Brethren entered into an agreement with the Care- 
free Children whereby the latter, in return for a 
part of their receipts, were allowed the use of the 
stage at the Hopital de la Trinite after each per- 
formance of the Mystery. That arrangement must 
have been exceedingly edifying to the spectators. 
To compare it with things with which one is familiar, 
one has merely to imagine a church now occupied by 
a preacher denouncing the sins and vanities of the 
world and immediately afterwards given over to 
theatricals performing '' The Merry Widow." But 
the arrangement between the Brethren of the Pas- 
sion and the Care-free Children is suggestive of the 
transition of the drama from sacred to secular. 

For the Soties of the Care-free Children, equally 
with the Moralities and Farces of the Basochians, 
had nothing in common with the Mysteries of the 
Brethren. While the latter concerned themselves 
with such abstract matters as Biblical stories or 
legends of the saints, the former grappled with life 
in Paris as it was there and then, and did not spare 
either the tyranny of the state or the vice of the in- 



320 Old Paris 

dividual. The early theatre, then, became a tribune, 
'' the voice by which the people expressed their 
grievances or showed their approbation. On the 
one hand, in effect, it made a violent attack (under 
the cloak of jesting) on contemporary institutions, 
where they were absurd or arbitrary ; on the other, 
it awarded praise to the ruling powers when they 
deserved well of the nation." As a consequence of 
the freedom with which they ridiculed institutions 
and high personages, the Basochians were con- 
stantly either in hot water or in prison. And they 
cared as little for the one as the other. When Par- 
liament commanded them to eliminate offensive pas- 
sages from their farces, they ignored the order; 
when a censor was appointed, they ignored him, too. 
Imprisonment on bread and water, threats of ban- 
ishment and the confiscation of their property, and 
public whipping, were powerless to stem their sat- 
ire. The Oare-free Children were not quite so ob- 
durate; as they and their president, the Prince of 
Fools, were often called upon to take part in the 
revels of the court, they were more amenable to dis- 
cipline. 

But when Louis XII ascended the throne a golden 
age dawned for the Basochians and their rivals. 
" My courtiers," the king said, " never tell me the 
unvarnished truth, and as long as I am ignorant of 
the truth I cannot know how the kingdom is gov- 
erned. The troupes of the king of the Basochians 







THE KING OF THE BASOCHIANS. 



The Theatres 321 

and the Prince of Fools have my authority to expose 
any abuse they may discover, whether at court or in 
the town, and to ridicule whom they please. I do 
not wish to be exempt from their attacks; but if 
they say a word against the Queen I will hang them 
all." That plenary license lasted all through the 
king's reign and was utilized so freely that in one 
Sotie the Care-free Children entertained their pa- 
trons with a broad satire of Pope Julius II, but as 
soon as Louis XII passed away the Parliament once 
more attempted a censorship of the theatre. 

Meanwhile the Brethren of the Passion were dis- 
covering that the Farces played in their hall by the 
Care-free Children were becoming far more popular 
with the crowd than their Mysteries, and they at- 
tempted to meet the situation by giving more and 
ever more emphasis to the buffoonery of their sacred 
dramas. An event happened in 1539 which caused 
them to accentuate that worldly policy. In that year 
they had to give up their hall in the Hopital de la 
Trinite, but, in 1543, after a brief sojourn in an- 
other building, they purchased a part of the Hotel 
de Bourgogne in the Rue Manconseil and established 
themselves there. 

As that new theatre played so important a part 
in the dramatic history of Paris and was the direct 
ancestor of the famous Comedie-Frangaise, a descrip- 
tion of its appearance in the mid-sixteenth century 
will be read with interest. The building " bore little 



322 Old Paris 

resemblance to what we nowadays call a theatre, and 
approximated more nearly to an office. The hall was 
vast, but low, in comparison with its dimensions, 
which gave accommodation for an audience of more 
than two thousand persons. The stage was of ex- 
traordinary depth, since it was constructed for the 
representation of Mysteries which involved a con- 
siderable number of actors. In performing plays 
which demanded little staging, the space was re- 
duced by means of tapestry curtains, hung from the 
middle of the vast stage. The lighting, during the 
performance, consisted of a row of candles in front 
of the stage, which required constant snuffing. In 
addition, there was above the actors a chandelier 
with four branches, hung in the air, with four great 
yellow wax-candles. There were two superposed 
rows of boxes, and each box, fitted with wooden 
benches, could contain some dozen spectators, 
plunged in semi-obscurity. The pit, in which the 
audience stood, or moved about at will, was no better 
lighted than the boxes." Apparently, then, the 
Brethren had devoted more attention to the equip- 
ment of their stage than to providing for the com- 
fort of their patrons; whoever suffered, they were 
determined to have ample space and machinery for 
the performance of their Mysteries. 

But those Mysteries were soon to be numbered 
among the things of the past. It seems that the li- 
cense the Brethren had allowed themselves in un- 



The Theatres 323 

derscoring the ribald elements of their plays had 
given offence to the Parliament; men of all creeds 
awoke at last to the suspicion that such buffoonery 
in association with so-called religious plays tended 
to bring religion itself into contempt; consequently 
in 1548 the Brethren were commanded to abandon 
their Mysteries and strictly forbidden to appear in 
any save secular plays. The strange thing, however, 
was that the Brethren, notwithstanding the horse- 
play they had introduced into their religious dramas, 
were still too pious to undertake straight comedy or 
farce, and so they solved their problem by letting 
their theatre to the Care-free players. From that 
time the church resumed its old hostility to the 
stage. While the Mysteries were still being per- 
formed it could not consistently break with the per- 
formers; they were, in a sense, doing the work of 
the church; but as soon as those Mysteries were 
prohibited and the stage of the Hotel de Bourgogne 
taken possession of by actors of mere farces and 
comedies, the priesthood began to once more regard 
the theatre as an agency of the devil. As Frederick 
Hawkins put it in his interesting " Annals of the 
French Stage," the Parisian priests henceforward 
" reprehended play-going as incompatible with true 
devotion, purity of life, and sobriety of thought. 
They condemned the actor to a sort of social out- 
lawry, declaring that unless he solemnly forswore 
his profession he could not receive the Holy Com- 



324 Old Paris 

immioii or be entitled to Clnistian bnrial. In otiier 
words, partly from an ascetic desire to minimize the 
pleasnres of existence, bnt chiefly from a mistaken 
dread of the extension of popnlar intelligence be- 
yond very narrow limits, the anathemas launched 
by the primitive Chnrch against the abom in ation of 
the Eoman circns were virtnally applied to an art 
which in point of morality was distinctly above the 
accepted standards of the time, and the records of 
which were mnch cleaner than those of the antago- 
nist it now had to face.'* This antagonism was eon- 
tintied for many generations and inflicted on actors 
and actresses such stifferings and indignities as 
wonld have been a disgrace to barbarianism. Yet 
they were perpetrated in the name of religion I 

Bnt so far as the theatre itself was concerned the 
enmity of the Chnrch was as fntile as the cnrse im- 
mortalized in " The Jackdaw of Eheims." 

For the Brethren of the Passion were at least 
shrewd men of business. Xot only were they will- 
ing to accept from the Care-free Children hard cash 
for the rent of their theatre in the Hotel de Bonr- 
gogne. thus conniving at the type of play in which 
they shrank from appearing themselves, bnt they 
were insistent in protecting snch pecuniary rights 
as were sectired to them by the edict of Charles TT. 
Hence, when, late in the sixteenth century, strolling 
players and university students attempted perform- 
ances in rivalry of those at the Hotel de Bourgogne 



The Theatres 325 

the Brethren promptly intervened. A little later, 
however, the situation was simplified for the new 
dramatic aspirants, for about 1582 both the Baso- 
chians and the Care-free Children abandoned their 
theatrical enterprises. It was at this juncture, then, 
that the Brethren of the Passion, to avoid having an 
empty theatre on their hands, rented their hall at 
the Hotel de Bourgogne to a travelling company, an 
act which definitely established the secular drama 
as part of the life of Paris. This was in 1588. 

From that date events moved quickly. Thus, 
within little more than a dozen years a second thea- 
tre, the Marais, had been established and a company 
of Italian players settled in the city. The Brethren, 
as lessees of the Hotel de Bourgogne, did their ut- 
most to resist these invasions of their territory, but 
after making themselves unpopular by securing the 
suppression of a theatrical booth at the Fair of St. 
Germain they compromised by granting the fair 
comedians and other rivals a license to act on the 
payment of a fee for each performance. It was 
under such conditions that the second playhouse, the 
Theatre du Marais, was added to the amusements of 
Paris. 

Henceforward the rivalry between the two thea- 
tres took a different form ; it was now a question of 
securing the best plays and the most accomplished 
players. Consequently when, in 1632, an attempt 
was made to establish a third theatre in the Eue 



326 Old Paris 

Michel-Comte, no opposition was offered by the two 
already in existence. The project, however, was 
viewed with alarm by the residents of the district; 
they petitioned the authorities to the effect that the 
rue was exceedingly narrow, and drew a woeful pic- 
ture of the inconvenience they would suffer if the 
street were blocked by coaches, etc. ; and their prayer 
was granted. 

Hence the contest for theatrical supremacy in 
Paris was for many years confined to the Hotel de 
Bourgogne and the Theatre du Marais, and they 
fluctuated in public favour according to the plays 
they staged or the talents of their actors. Perhaps 
on the whole the balance inclined to the first-named, 
for by 1617 its company was known as the Troupe 
Eoyale. And when their ranks were suddenly de- 
pleted by the death of three of the most popular 
actors, Louis XIII ordered six members of the 
Maj-ais company to join the cast at the Hotel de 
Bourgogne. The same monarch, by the way, has to 
be credited with an edict which did much to give a 
high tone to the drama in his reign. 

Yet it was not to royal patronage the theatres 
owed their greatest debt ; that was due to the three 
men who between them may be said to have created 
the drama of France — Corneille, Moliere, and Ra- 
cine. Of course there were others who had pre- 
pared the way, such as Hardy, Viaud, Rotrou 
(whom Voltaire held to be the real founder of the 



The Theatres 327 

French theatre), Mairet; but with the advent of 
Corneille, and especially with his " Le Cid," the old 
type of play passed away and the new was born. 
Practically all his forerunners had owed something 
to the old Mysteries or crude farces of the middle 
ages; he made a departure in that he " combined 
art with vitality, and for the first time produced a 
play which was at once a splendid piece of literature 
and an immense popular success." It was toward 
the close of 1636 that the ' ' Cid ' ' was produced and 
its author's confidence in its merits was abundantly 
justified. '' The double strife between love and 
duty," wrote Mr. Hawkins, " was depicted with 
matchless force and sympathy. The haughty spirit 
of the great vassals of mediaeval Spain shone forth 
in all its energy. Imaginative power, vivid portrait- 
ure of character, glowing energy of thought and ex- 
pression, — nothing seemed wanting. The effect of 
such a play at a time when the romantic spirit had 
not died away may be well conceived. The audience 
were worked up to something like a frenzy of admi- 
ration, and the curtain fell upon by far the greatest 
triumph yet achieved on the French stage." 

Moliere counted for still more in the development 
of the Parisian theatre inasmuch as he was an ac- 
complished actor and a skilful manager in addition 
to being a great dramatist. Some seven years after 
the production of the '^ Cid " of Corneille the man 
who was to create modern French comedy was be- 



328 Old Paris 

ginning that rough experience as a strolling player 
which proved so valuable a training-school for his 
unique mimetic gifts. For, in his twenty-first year, 
Moliere abandoned the legal profession to which his 
father had designated him and definitely entered 
upon his career as an actor. Nor did his failure in 
Paris turn him from his purpose. Notwithstanding 
the debts incurred through the indifference of the 
public to the plays offered by himself and his com- 
pany at the Theatre Illustre, he and his comrades in 
1646 set out with brave hearts for a tour of the coun- 
try towns. 

They might have been less hopeful could they have 
foreseen that twelve years were to elapse ere they 
returned. And perhaps they would not have been 
so stout of heart if they could have realized the 
miseries and vicissitudes of those wander years. 
Moliere, however, never looked back or regretted 
his choice. Nor did he ever lose sight of the pur- 
pose on which he had set his heart — the ambition 
to return to Paris and reverse the failure of his 
earlier years. In 1658, then, he was at Eouen still 
planning how he might obtain a hearing in the capi- 
tal. " After several secret journeys thither," wrote 
a chronicler of the late seventeenth century, " he 
was fortunate enough to secure the patronage of 
Monsieur, the king's only brother, who granted him 
his protection, and permitted the company to take 
his name, presenting them as his servants to the 




THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE IN THE HALL OF THE LOUVRE. 



The Theatres 329 

king and the queen mother." The outcome of this 
stroke of fortune was that Moliere was summoned 
to perform before Louis XIV and his court on the 
24th of October, 1658. 

But the royal command also stipulated the play 
for the occasion, which was none other than Cor- 
neille's " Nicomede," a somewhat dull tragedy of 
political life. Now the forte of Moliere and his com- 
pany was comedy, and hence they must have re- 
garded the king's selection with rueful feelings. It 
was ordeal enough for the strolling players to ap- 
pear before the court of France ; to ask for tragedy 
from comedians seemed equivalent to foredooming 
them to abject failure. And, to make matters worse, 
the audience in the hall of the old Louvre included, 
in addition to the king, Anne of Austria, Cardinal 
Mazarin, and a crowd of courtiers, not a few of the 
actors from the Hotel de Bourgogne. 

Moliere and his comrades, as a friendly biogra- 
pher noted " were less at home in the stately lines of 
Corneille than in the quick and vivacious dialogue 
of ' L'Etourdi,' and the trepidation incident to the 
occasion must have rendered them unable to do any- 
thing like justice to themselves. ' Nicomede ' fin- 
ished, Moliere, perhaps sensible of their shortcom- 
ings, took a very unusual step. He made a speech 
from the stage. He thanked his majesty for his 
goodness in bearing the defects of the troupe, who 
had naturally felt some agitation on finding them- 



330 Old Paris 

selves before so august an assembly, and who, in 
their eagerness to have the honour of playing before 
the greatest king in the world, had forgotten that he 
had already much better actors in his service. ' As, ' 
continued Moliere, ' his majesty has so far endured 
our country manners, I venture, very humbly, to 
hope that I may be permitted to give one of the little 
pieces which have procured me some reputation, 
and with which I have been fortunate enough to 
amuse the provinces.' The king assented by retain- 
ing his seat; the audience, who but a few minutes 
previous had been preparing to disperse, resumed 
an attitude of attention. The little piece referred 
to was ' Le Docteur Amoureux,' one of Moliere 's 
earliest farces. The result must have more than 
equalled his most roseate anticipations. He quickly 
converted a failure into a triumph. Everybody 
present had much ado to restrain the merriment 
produced. ' ' 

Nor did the triumph of Moliere end with the fall 
of the curtain. Louis XIV had been so much enter- 
tained with the ' ' little piece ' ' that a few hours later 
he commanded Moliere and his company to remain 
in Paris. 

And the problem of where they were to play was 
soon solved. A little before this time, at the insti- 
gation of Cardinal Mazarin, a company of Italian 
actors had been given the use of a hall in the Hotel 
du Petit Bourbon, and as they performed only on 



The Theatres 331 

three days of the week that hall was available on 
the other days for Moliere and his company. There, 
then, the newcomers established themselves, and, 
after a few futile experiments with the plays of 
Corneille, fully justified the favour of the king as 
soon as they confined themselves to that type of 
comedy in which they had been so successful in the 
provinces. About a year later, too, their versatile 
manager wrote a one-act comedy, ^' Les Precieuses 
Eidicules," which greatly enhanced their and his 
reputation. Those were the days, it will be remem- 
bered, when the affectations of the salons and the 
inane sentimentality of the de Scuderi romances 
were the fashion in Paris, and Moliere, greatly dar- 
ing, set himself the task of holding all that triviality 
up to ridicule. Hence his sketch of *' The Affected 
Misses," which one enthusiastic playgoer inter- 
rupted with the exclamation, '' Courage, Moliere, 
that's good comedy! " and another praised to the 
extent of saying, '' It cost me thirty sous to see it, 
but I laughed for more than ten pistoles." 

Some two years after Moliere 's return to Paris 
the Hotel du Petit Bourbon was pulled down, and 
it was then, by the permission of the king, he and 
his company took possession of Richelieu's old thea- 
tre in the Palais Royal. There he remained for the 
rest of his life, producing year after year those 
comedies which are among the glories of French 
dramatic literature. Neither the fame he won as 



332 Old Paris 

an actor and dramatist, nor the marked favour of 
the king, nor the intrigues of his rival players at 
the other theatres, nor the sorrows of his private 
life wrought any change in Moliere 's lovable nature. 
And never was his devotion to his profession and 
his attachment to his company more convincingly 
illustrated than by his action when offered election 
to the French Academy. That was an honour al- 
ready greatly in esteem with men of letters ; it was 
an honour, too, of which no writer of his day was 
more worthy than Moliere. But a condition was at- 
tached to the election; he must give up his profes- 
sion as an actor. That decided him to decline the 
offer. '' My sense of honour," he said, '' leaves me 
no alternative." And when he was sarcastically 
asked what honour there could be in blackening his 
face and playing the buffoon on a public stdge, he 
at once rejoined, ' ' More than a hundred persons are 
benefited by my appearing in a piece; and I will 
not insult a profession which I love, and to which 
I am so materially indebted, by purchasing personal 
advantage at the cost of throwing a slur upon it." 
And so the name of Moliere was never included 
among the Forty. But a later generation of Immor- 
tals made amends by placing his bust in their meet- 
ing-place with the graceful inscription: '' Nothing 
was wanting to his glory; he was wanting to ours." 
As Moliere 's return to Paris in 1658 altered the 
theatrical situation in the city, so his death in 1673 







JEAN BAPTISTE POQUELIN MOLIERE. 



The Theatres 333 

resulted in another readjustment of the playhouses. 
The widow of the dramatist at once assumed the 
management of the company at the Palais Eoyal, but 
a few months later, owing to the king granting the 
use of that auditorium for opera, she found herself 
without a stage to play on. There was, however, 
another theatre available in the Rue Mazarine 
which she was able to purchase, and thither the 
'' Comediens du Roi " removed. Seven years later 
their ranks were strengthened by the players from 
the Hotel de Bourgogne owing to a whim of the 
king who, by that date, had come to believe that the 
drama was suffering from competition. 

Moliere's widow proved to be a better manager 
than she had been a wife. At the outset of her 
career a ' ' magnificent success ' ' was prophesied for 
her, and the forecast was abundantly realized. Yet 
in the second year of her management an incident 
happened which threatened her total ruin. During 
a performance of " Circe," a play by Thomas Cor- 
neille, a man who had secured one of the seats on 
the stage accosted Mme. Moliere in the wings with 
all the freedom of a privileged lover, and at the close 
of the play followed her with equal confidence to her 
dressing-room. '' May I speak freely before this 
girl? " he asked, alluding to the dresser. '' Pardon 
me, Monsieur," replied the astonished actress; 
" there are no secrets between us, and you are at 
liberty to explain your intrusion before everybody." 



334 Old Paris 

To this the interloper replied angrily that as she had 
failed to keep her appointment he had come to the 
theatre to convince himself that no evil had befallen 
her, and that he had nothing to reproach himself 
with. More amazed than ever, Mme. Moliere de- 
manded what grounds her visitor had for suggest- 
ing they had met before, and to her astonishment 
heard him declare that she had met him some twenty 
times in a house of ill fame, etc. At that she ordered 
all the company to be called to her room, but when 
they had assembled, the stranger, before the actress 
could explain her purpose, repeated his assertion 
that Mme. Moliere had often accompanied him to 
the house of a procuress, and wound up by declaring 
that the necklace she was wearing, and which he 
snatched from her throat, was one of his presents. 

Without wasting further words the actress had 
the police summoned and gave her accuser into cus- 
tody. But his examination made matters look all 
the worse for Mme. Moliere. It transpired that he 
was a M. Lescot, a President from Grenoble, who, 
having become enamoured of the actress from see- 
ing her on the stage, and failing to obtain an intro- 
duction to her, had subsequently met a woman 
named Ledoux, who thought she might be able to se- 
cure him the desired meeting. And when he re- 
turned to Ledoux 's house some days later he found 
she had been as good as her word, for the actress 
was there to receive him. They met many times, 



The Theatres 335 

and once, when out for a walk, he purchased her a 
necklace at a shop in the Quai des Orfevres. The 
only stipulation Mme. Moliere made was that he was 
not to speak to her at the theatre, and he respected 
that request until the day when she failed to keep 
an appointment. 

And the strange thing was that the necklace part 
of Lescot's story was corroborated by the jeweller 
from whom the purchase was made; when con- 
fronted with the actress he was certain that she was 
the woman for whom it had been bought. All that 
remained was for the woman Ledoux to be produced 
to complete the sordid story. And then Mme. Mo- 
liere 's ruin would be complete, for even Louis XIV 
would have objected to an actress in one of his com- 
panies concerting with a procuress. Just, however, 
when the outlook was blackest, the woman Ledoux 
was run to earth, and owned that she had been 
guilty of substitution. Among her clients she had 
a girl named Tourelle, who was not only amazingly 
like Mme. Moliere in appearance but was proficient 
in imitating many of her mannerisms. This substi- 
tute was also arrested shortly afterwards and fully 
confessed her share in the fraud. 

That whim of Louis XIV referred to above was 
an important event in the stage annals of Paris. 
His edict commanding the players of the Hotel de 
Bourgogne to join forces with their fellow actors 
at the Theatre Guenegaud in the Rue Mazarine 



336 Old Paris 

marked the birth of the famous Comedie-Frangaise, 
or Theatre Frangais as it is sometimes called. The 
object of the king in ordering this union was to 
* ^ render the representations of comedies more com- 
plete, and to afford the players opportunity of per- 
fecting themselves " in their profession. As if to 
accentuate the more complete staging of the plays 
a revival of Corneille's " Andromede " was distin- 
guished by a real horse being cast for the role of 
Pegasus. The animal acquitted itself to perfection, 
pawing and snorting in a realistic manner, owing, no 
doubt, to its having been nearly starved and then 
excited by a vision of a man in the wings holding out 
a basket of oats. 

After nine years' occupancy of the theatre in the 
Eue Mazarine, the '' Comediens du Roi " were once 
more obliged to shift their quarters. It seems that 
the pupils of the adjacent College Mazarin were dis- 
turbed by the commotion of the playgoers, and at 
length a protest was addressed to the king. And as 
Louis XIV was now under the sobering influence of 
Madame de Maintenon he heard the complaint with 
sympathy and ordered the players to seek another 
theatre elsewhere. It was not an easy matter to find 
a suitable building, but success at last rewarded the 
search, and in April, 1689, the company took posses- 
sion of a new home on the Rue des Fosses-St.-Ger- 
main, the thoroughfare now known as the Rue de 
I'Ancienne Comedie. Many years later they were 



The Theatres 337 

to return to that Palais Eoyal where the modern 
Theatre Frangais perpetuates Moliere's early asso- 
ciation with the mansion of Richelieu. 

As may be gathered from the foregoing sketch, the 
theatrical history of Paris during the seventeenth 
century was one of many changes. And as the cen- 
tury drew to a close several events happened which 
cast something of a gloom over the players, most of 
which could be traced to the pietistic injfluence of 
Madame de Maintenon. First in order came the re- 
tirement of Racine from dramatic authorship, which 
may have been due to genuine religious feelings or, 
on the other hand, to a desire to stand well with the 
king's austere wife; next Louis XIV gradually 
cooled in his ardour for the stage ; and, finally, the 
precarious hold the players had on royal favour was 
startlingly illustrated by the dismissal of the Italian 
company. The latter had been allowed the use of the 
Hotel de Bourgogne from the date of the foundation 
of the Comedie-Frangaise, and doubtless imagined 
they had a secure position among the entertainers 
of Paris. In the early months of 1697, however, they 
presumed too much upon that confidence. Finding 
that they could win great applause by introducing 
into their plays satirical portraits of high person- 
ages, they announced a piece entitled " La Fausse 
Prude," which, so the rumour ran, was to hold Ma- 
dame de Maintenon up to ridicule. Intimation of 
that fact reached the ears of the king's wife, with 



338 Old Paris 

the result that on her complaining to Louis he at 
once issued a decree ordering the Italian players to 
return to their native land. Nor would he listen to 
their plea for mercy. " You have no reason," he 
said, " to complain that Cardinal Mazarin tempted 
you from Italy. You came to France on foot, and 
you have made enough to return in your carriages. ' ' 
So the decree was enforced, and Paris knew the 
Italian comedians no more until the Duke of Orleans 
became Eegent and in 1718 allowed them to return 
to their old quarters at the Hotel de Bourgogne. 

Few mourned the death of Louis XIV. He had 
outlived his glory. The corpse of the ^' Grand Mo- 
narque ' ' was left to the care of a few servants and 
was " saluted all along the road to St. Denis by the 
curses of a noisy crowd sitting in the cabarets, cele- 
brating his death by drinking more than their fill 
as a compensation for having suffered too much 
hunger during his lifetime." If the theatrical en- 
tertainers of Paris did not parade their relief at 
the king's death in so coarse a manner, their inward 
rejoicing was probably just as sincere. 

No sooner had the Duke of Orleans firmly grasped 
the reins of the Regency than the theatres began to 
flourish as they had never done before. It is true, 
as Paul Lacroix noted, that the old court party main- 
tained its aloof attitude, '^ but the younger court 
party was only too anxious to make up for lost time. 
And thus the Regency made the fortune of the thea- 



The Theatres 339 

tres, which were nearly ruined by the austerity 
which marked the close of the previous reign. The 
court of the Palais Royal set the fashion, and the 
Eegent, or some of his household, assisted nearly 
every evening, in state or in private, either at the 
Opera or the Comedie." In fact, leaving modern 
times out of account, the period from the death of 
Louis XIV to the eve of the Eevolution was the 
Golden Age of the theatrical annals of Paris. 
' But there was a dark side to the picture. Nothing 
mitigated that bitter enmity of the Church towards 
the players as a class which began with the prohibi- 
tion of the old Mysteries. 

Even royal influence was ineffective to change that 
hostility. Louis XIII issued a declaration in 1641 
expressing a desire that the calling of actors should 
not '^ expose them to blame or prejudice their repu- 
tation in public intercourse; " and Louis XIV, in 
addition to marking his ' personal friendship for 
Moliere by many special favours, announced it as 
his opinion that the profession of an actor was not 
incompatible with the quality of a gentleman. But 
those royal dicta were in vain. The priesthood per- 
sisted in regarding actors as unfit to partake of the 
communion and unworthy of " Christian burial." 
And so the corpse of Moliere was buried with less 
reverence than would have been paid to the body of 
a pauper. " Most of the clergy, Bossuet not ex- 
cepted, seized upon the circumstances -attending his 



340 Old Paris 

death as a means of afiixing an additional stigma to 
the stage. For example, contrary to the spirit and 
letter of their Master 's teaching, they maintained 
that, having been overtaken by mortal illness during 
his performance, he was to be regarded as an object 
of Divine displeasure." Sixty years later the rite- 
less burial of Moliere was repeated in the case of 
Adrienne Lecouvreur, whose wasted body was com- 
mitted to the earth with less ceremony than attends 
the sepulture of a dead cat. The horror of that 
shameful indignity moved Voltaire to appeal to the 
players. " Declare to the world," he urged, '* that 
you will not exercise your profession, until you, the 
paid servants of the king, are treated like other citi- 
zens in the king's service." But they had not the 
courage to act upon his advice. Indeed, when, a 
generation later, a lawyer wrote a book in protest 
against the intolerable bigotry of the Church, im- 
pelled thereto because an actress had been refused 
the rites of matrimony as an excommunicated per- 
son, his book was burned by the common hangman 
and his name erased from the roll of advocates! 

Naturally, as was the case with the inns and tav- 
erns and cafes and salons, the events of the French 
Revolution left their impress on the history of the 
theatres of Paris. Even in the early days of that 
upheaval the stage quickly became a mirror of the 
times. Here, for example, is a significant passage 
from an inedited letter of the poet Samuel Eogers, 



The Theatres 341 

who was in Paris in February, 1790. " In the eve- 
ning, ' ' he wrote, ' ' we saw a new piece. A nobleman 
just released from a long confinement by illness and 
ignorant of the Revolution, is shocked to find that 
his servants are out of livery, and to hear himself 
addressed without a title. His daughter, whom he 
has destined for a convent, is in love with a Bour- 
geois, and he writes for a lettre du cachet to confine 
him. To crown all, his creditors have the insolence 
to demand the payment of his debts, but after much 
point and equivoque he is at last brought to reason. 
It was received with the most rapturous applause. ' ' 
Equally ominous was another incident which took 
place later in the same year. The chronicler was an 
English earl, who thus described the event in a letter 
to a friend: '^ A few nights ago ' Richard Coeur de 
Lion ' was acted, and a woman of fashion was ab- 
solutely forced to leave the house, because she 
clapped with too much violence while the famous 
song, ' Richard, mon roi ! ' was singing ; a hun- 
dred fellows started up together roaring, ^ a has la 
femme en ev entail hlanc/ and would not suffer the 
actors to proceed till this Aristocrate left the house. 
The moment she was gone, there was a most violent 
applause ; and a perfect calm succeeded. ' ' 

Neither Rogers nor the earl gave the name of 
the theatre in which they had seen those signs of 
the times. There were at least a dozen playhouses 
open, and all that can be said with certainty is that 



342 Old Paris 

the theatre concerned was neither the Comedie-Fran- 
gaise nor the Theatre Italien. Even so late as Janu- 
ary, 1793, both those houses favoured royalist pro- 
ductions. 

Not that the Revolution was without sympathizers 
among the actors of at least the Comedie-Frangaise. 
On the contrary, such popular members of the com- 
pany as Talma, Dugazon, and Mme. Vestris, with 
several more, soon declared themselves on the side 
of the revolutionary leaders and left the Comedie 
to play elsewhere. But the greater number of the 
king's servants remained faithful to the cause of 
royalism. That loyalty was not preserved save at 
the cost of suffering and courage. Fleury put on 
record the pang he felt when, as he passed through 
the lobbies of the theatre, he saw effaced from the 
box-doors the names of those comrades who had de- 
serted. " The daub of paint over the words ' Loge 
de M. Talma ' was as distressing to me as the ob- 
literation of the names of Mademoiselle Desgarcins, 
Dugazon, and Madame Vestris. Formerly, in the 
days of our friendship, I had been in the habit of 
giving a familiar tap at the door of Dugazon 's box, 
and my comrade never failed to welcome me by 
some good-humoured sally. I was fool enough to 
make the wonted signal on the present occasion, first 
looking round to see that nobody was near^ and then 
slily giving three knocks on the door. The hollow 
echo of the empty box was the only answer I re- 



The Theatres 343 

ceived, and I glided away with increased dejection." 
Nor did Fleury recover his spirits until he reflected 
that after all the majority of the company had re- 
mained faithful to the traditions of the theatre. 

Such devotion was proof of more than ordinary 
courage. For, as they gained the upper hand, the 
revolutionary leaders did their best to use all the 
theatres in the interests of their propaganda. 
Against that tyranny the Comedie-Frangaise held 
out to the last hour. Consequently that playhouse 
became the rallying-ground of the friends of law 
and order. And when Jean Louis Laya wrote his 
" Ami des Lois," that trenchant indictment of mob- 
rule with its thinly veiled characterizations of 
Eobespierre and Marat the Comedie company im- 
mediately put it in rehearsal. 

No play produced at the Comedie-FrauQaise cre- 
ated such tense interest as '' The Friend of the 
Law." While still rehearsing the comedy the actors 
were warned that the Commune had an eye upon 
them, and that some members of the Convention were 
watching for an excuse to interfere. Heedless of 
those ominous hints, the actors went on with their 
preparations, and when the day came for the first 
performance the theatre was besieged from an early 
hour in the afternoon by an immense crowd. The 
house was, of course, packed to its utmost capacity, 
and the play was received with unparalleled enthu- 
siasm. Those scenes were repeated at each per- 



344 Old Paris 

f ormance ; playgoers waited for hours in the streets ; 
tickets were retailed at fabulous premiums; and 
each audience was frenzied in its approval of every 
line which appealed for moderation, justice and 
honour. 

Of course the revolutionary leaders were furious. 
In their newspapers they demanded the suppression 
of the play, the arrest of Laya and the actors, and 
an assault upon the theatre; at the Jacobins Club 
they indulged in fierce denunciations and threats. 
The result was that in the municipal council an or- 
der was passed forbidding any further performance 
of " The Friend of the Law," but by the time that 
order was placarded on the walls of the theatre an- 
other immense audience had gathered inside. Mayor 
Chambon, however, forced his way to the stage be- 
fore the curtain rose, and was proceeding to an- 
nounce the decision of the council when his voice 
was drowned with angry shouts of, *' The play I 
The play! " In the end the audience was pacified 
by the promise that a messenger should be at once 
dispatched to the Convention to ascertain whether 
the municipal authorities had any power to censure 
stage plays. The answer was not long in coming, 
and as it was in the negative the performance was 
begun once more amid a scene of wild enthusiasm. 
But that was the last performance. Before the day 
announced for its repetition, the revolutionary lead- 
ers issued a fresh decree and ordered the " frothy 



The Theatres 345 

general " Santerre to see that it was carried 
out. 

And a few months later the players of the Come- 
die reaped the reward of their courage. No matter 
what piece they presented they were the objects of 
suspicion. And, finally, when they staged the 
'^ Pamela " of Frangais de Neuf chateau, scarcely a 
sentence of which was without its application to the 
lawless events of the hour, the performers were 
proclaimed a gang of aristocrats and incontinently 
thrown into prison. 

With the arrest of the Comedie company '' finis " 
was written to the annals of the theatres of old 
Paris. In the name of '' liberty " the stage passed 
under a tyranny of the most despotic type. Laya 
had to seek safety in flight, and several persons who 
were found to possess a copy of his " The Friend 
of the Law " were sent to the guillotine. And the 
Convention, in addition to ordering that the theatres 
should perform once every week such plays as in- 
culcated '' the love of liberty," registered a decree 
that " every theatre, in which any performance, 
tending to revive royalty, shall be audaciously rep- 
resented, shall be shut up, and the managers pun- 
ished with exemplary severity." And to complete 
the good work it was ordained that the " Mar- 
seilles ' ' hymn should be sung at the close of all the- 
atrical entertainments. 

Something more than natural pride in his profes- 



346 Old Paris 

sion convinced the comedian Flenry that a collection 
of the play-bills of Parisian theatres would furnish 
the most valuable annals of the city's history. That 
is certainly true for the period beginning with the 
theatrical enterprise of the Brethren of the Passion 
and ending with the Reign of Terror. No memory 
has survived of even the names of thousands of the 
plays performed during those four centuries, but 
those which have been preserved from oblivion are 
sufficient to show how faithfully the theatres re- 
flected the life of bygone generations. Whether 
satirizing the fops of the salons, or deriding the pre- 
tentious incompetence of the doctors, or depicting 
the boisterous revels of the taverns and the aca- 
demic discussions of the cafes, the players were in- 
deed " the abstract and brief chronicles " of the 
life of old Paris. 



THE END. 



SELECTED BIBLIOGEAPHY 

In the preparation of the present volume the fol- 
lowing works have been most useful. The list does 
not pretend to be exhaustive, but it is fairly typical 
of the literature of the subject. Many details have, 
in addition, been derived from '' Notes and Que- 
ries," ^' Chalmers's General Biographical Diction- 
ary," " Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Com- 
mission," etc.: 

Alison, A. — History of Europe. 

Alison, A. — My Life and Writings. 

Annual Register, The. 1758-1838. 

Berty, Adolphb. — Topographic historique du Vieux Paris. 

BiRE, Edmond. — Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris Pendant la Terreur. 

BoswELL, James. — The Life of Samuel Johnson. 

Byrne, W. P. — Realities of Paris Life. 

Cain, Georges. — Promenades dans Paris. 

Cain, Georges. — Nouvelles Promenades dans Paris. 

Cain, Georges. — Cmns de Paris. 

Campardon, Emile. — Les Spectacles de la Foire. 

Carlyle, Thomas. — The French Revolution. 

Craik, G. L. — Paris and its Historical Scenes. 

Dulaure, Jacques Antoine. • — Histoire Physique, Civile, & Morale 

de Paris. 
Edwards, H. S. — Old and New Paris. 
Emerson, R. W. — Journals. 

FouRNiER, Edourd. — Histoire des Enseignes de Paris. 
Fournier, Edourd. — Histoire des Hotelleries, Cabarets, etc. 
Gibbon, Edward. — Autobiographic Memoirs. 
Hare, A. J. C. — Paris. 
Harrison, W. — Memorable Paris Houses. 
Hawkins, Frederick. — Annals of the French Stage. 

347 



348 Old Paris 

Head, F. B. — A Faggot of French Sticks. 

Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury. — Autobiography. 

Holland, Lady. — A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith. 

Hugo, Victor. — Notre Dame. 

Jackson, Catherine C. — Old Paris: its Court and Literary Salons. 

Jerrold, W. Blanchard. — At Home in Paris. 

Jerrold, W. Blanchard. — On the Boulevards. 

Lacrodc, Paul. — CuriosiUs du Vieux Paris. 

Lacroix, Paul. — 18e Siecle Institutions, Usages, & Costumes. 

MoRLEY, John. — Diderot and the Encyclopaedists. 

MoRLEY, John. — Rousseau. 

MoRLEY, John. — Voltaire. 

Morrow, W. C. — Bohemian Paris. 

MuRGER, Henry. — Scenes de la Boheme. 

Pardoe, J. S. H. — Pilgrimages in Paris. 

Pardoe, J. S. H. — Louis XIV and the Court of France in the 17th 

Century. 
Pellisson, p. — Histoire de VAcadime Franqoise. 
Rutland, Duke of. — Journal of a Trip to Paris, 1814. 
Sala, G. a. — Paris Herself Again. 

Sauval, Henri. — Histoire 6k Recherches des AntiquitSs de Paris. 
Scott, J. — Paris Revisited. 
Scott, J. — Visit to Paris, 1814. 
Shepherd, W. — Paris in 1802 and 1814. 

Sterne, L. — A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. 
Treveylan, G. Otto. — The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. 
Vandam, A. D. — An Englishman in Paris. 
Vandam, a. D. — My Paris Note-Book. 
Walford, C. — Fairs Past and Present. 



INDEX 



" Address to the French People," 

79. 
Aga, Soliman, 98. 
Alard, Charles, 291, 292. 
Alard, Pierre, 292. 
Alary, Abbe, 208. 
Aliband, Louis, 83. 
Alison, Sir Archibald, 149. 
" Ami des Lois," 343. 
Amiel, Henri, 6. 
Angel, The, 16. 
Anglais, Caf6, 156, 157, 158. 
" Annals of the French Stage," 

323. 
Aristophanes, 271. 
Armand, Mile., 297. 
Arnauld, Sophie, 64. 
Artois, Robert, Count of, 12, 13. 
*' Astree " 184. 
August, Tenth' of , f^te, 310, 311, 

312. 
Automatons, 293, 294. 

Balzac, Honore de, 122, 160, 161, 
170, 171, 172. 

Baleac, Jean de, 187, 188. 

" Barber of Seville, The," 110. 

Bartholomew, St., Massacre of, 

63, 64. 
Basket of Flowers, The, 70. 
Basochians, the, 318, 319, 320, 325. 
Bastille, the, 310, 311. 
Beaumarchais, Pierre A. Caron de, 

109, 110, 111, 263, 264. 
Beauregard, Captain, 42, 43, 45. 
Benserade, Isaac de, 187, 188. 
Bergami, 266, 267. 
Billard, 293. 
Bire, Edmond, 142, 312. 
Blackamoor, The, 37, 38, 39. 
Blanc, Louis, 152. 
BoUeau, Nicholas, 34, 234, 236. 



Bohngbroke, Henry St. John, Vis- 
count, 179, 198, 207, 208, 211. 

Boon, Gertrude, 296. 

Bories, Frangois, 61. 

Bossuet, Jacques B., 185. 

" Bouillabaisse, the Ballad of," 
162, 163, 164, 165. 

Bourchardon, E., 280. 

Brasserie L'Esperance, 93. 

Brasserie, The, 92, 93. 

Brethren of the Passion, 316, 317, 
318, 319, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325. 

Breton Club, 211, 212. 

Brewing regulations, 11, 12. 

Brunswick, Duke of, 62. 

Burgundy Vintage Restaurant, 
178. 

" Cafe des Nymphes," 300. 

" Cafe, Le," 127. 

Cagliostro, Count, 252, 253, 254, 

256. 
Cain, Georges, 39, 41, 60, 264. 
Camperdon, Emile, 292. 
Capet, Hugh, 1. 
Care-free Children, 318, 319, 320, 

321, 323, 324, 325. 
Carlyle, Thomas, 141, 313. 
Caroline of Brunswick, 266, 267. 
C^nacle, the, 238. 
" Cid, Le," 127, 327. 
Circle des Etrangers, 226, 230. 
Clovis, The King, 61. 
Clubs in Paris, 207, 209, 210, 219. 
Chabot, Frangois, 215, 216, 217, 

218. 
Chambon, Mayor, 344. 
Champcenetz, M. de, 246, 247, 

248. 
Chapelain, Jean, 187, 236. 
Chapelle, Claude, 33, 34, 234, 236, 

237, 238. 



349 



350 



Index 



Charles I, 36. 

Charles II, 195, 207. 

Charles IV, 14. 

Charles VI, 316, 324. 

Chaxles X, 81. 

Chartres, Caf6, 143. 

Chateau des Fleurs, 262, 263. 

Chat Noir, the, 177, 178. 

Chatrain, Louis G. C. A., 93, 94. 

Cherbury, Lord Herbert of, 35, 36, 

37, 181. 
Chevalier, Sulpice G., 118. 
Cobblers' f^e, 302, 303. 
Cochin, Charles, 276. 
Coffee, introduction of, 96, 97, 98. 
Coligny, Admiral, 63, 64. 
Colisee, the, 245. 
Comedie-Frangaise, 105, 106, 109, 

110, 111, 124, 127, 246, 321, 

336, 337, 342, 343, 345. 
Condillac, Abb6 de, 47, 48, 70. 
Confr^rie de la Passion, 316. 
Conrart, Valentin, 232, 233. 
Contat, Louise, 227. 
Corday, Charlotte, 77, 78, 79, 80, 

221 
Cordeliers Club, 220, 221. 
Corneille, Pierre, 187, 326, 327, 

329 336. 
Corneille, Thomas, 333. 
" Cyrus, Le Grand," 189, 190. 

Dagobert, 283. 

D'Alembert, 70, 198, 205. 

D'Angennes, Julie, 186. 

Dan ton, Georges Jacques, 112, 

143, 212, 220. 
D'Aubigne, Frangoise, 194. 
D'Aubign^, Theodore Agrippa, 37. 
Daudet, Alphonse, 90, 91, 150, 

151, 167, 168, 239. 
David, Jacques Louis, 310, 311, 

312. 
Debrosse, Solomon, 268. 
Deffand, Madame du, 201, 203, 

204, 205. 
Demidoff, Prince, 159. 
Deschamps, Eustache, 14. 
Desmoulins, Camille, 112, 138, 

139, 141, 143, 220. 
Destouches, Chevalier, 198. 
" Devin du Village," 108, 145. 
Diderot, Denis, 58, 70, 111, 112, 

131, 132, 134. 
Disraeli, Isaac, 242. 



Divion, Jeanne de, 12, 13. 
Douglas, Mr., 84, 85, 86. 
Dugazon, Jean, 252, 255, 256, 342. 
Dumas, Alexandre, 160, 161, 162. 
Dupuytren Museum, 220. 
Durand, Cafe, 170. 
Duret, Theodore, 176. 
D'Urf6, Honors, 184. 
Dutch Cafg, 129. 

Edward III, 14. 

Edward VII, 125. 

Emerson, Ralph W., 10, 86, 87, 

226, 227. 
Enfants Sans-Souci, Les, 318. 
English Cafg, 129. 
" EngUshman in Paris," 93. 
Entre sol Club, 208, 209. 
Epinay, Madame d', 201, 205, 206. 
Erckmann, Emile, 93, 94. 
" Esprit des Lois," 198. 
Estr6es, Gabrielle d', 261. 

Fair of St. Denis, 283, 284. 

Fair of St. Germain, 99, 283, 285, 

286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 292, 294, 

295. 
Fair of St. Lawrence, 283, 285, 

286, 292, 295, 296, 297, 298. 
Fair of St. Ovide, 298, 299, 300. 
Feast of the Parchment, 284, 285, 
Federation, fete of the, 306, 307, 

308, 309, 310. 
F^te of Reason, 313. 
Fete of the Supreme Being, 313. 
Fetes of old Paris, 301, 302. 
Feuillants Club, 220, 221, 222, 223. 
Feuillet, Octave, 155. 
Fevrier's restaurant, 140, 141. 
Fireworks in Paris, 242, 243. 
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 75, 76. 
Flaubert dinner, the, 239. 
Flaubert, Gustave, 239. 
" Flatteur, Le," 127. 
Fleury, Abraham J. B., 209, 210, 

219, 248, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 

342, 346. 
Fleury, Cardinal, 209. 
" Foire, Les Spectacles de la," 292. 
Foulkes, Mr., 82. 
Foumel, Victor, 71. 
Fox, Charles James, 8. 
Foy, Caf^, 138, 139. 
Foyot, Caf6, 123. 
France, Anatole, 37. 



Index 



351 



Frascati Club, 226, 227, 230. 
Frascati gardens, 257, 258. 
French Academy, 232, 233, 332. 
" Friend of the Law, The," 343, 

344, 345. 
Froissart, 14, 15. 

Gambetta, Leon, 91, 92, 135, 168, 

169, 170. 
Gambling-houses, 224, 225, 228, 

229, 230. 
Gare de I'Est, 286. 
Garnerin, 260, 261. 
Garrick, David, 64. 
Garvarni, 118, 242. 
Gaudon, Claude Pierre, 299, 300. 
Gautier, Th^ophile, 119, 135. 
Geoffrin, Madame, 201, 202, 203. 
George IV, 266. 
Gerard, Michel, 212, 213. 
Gibbon, Edward, 55, 56, 57, 58, 

245. 
Girard, Philippe, 274. 
Golden Compass Inn, 69. 
Golden Cup, The, 60. 
Goncourt, Edmond de, 118, 119, 

122. 
Goncourt, Jules de, 118, 119, 120, 

123, 150, 151, 156, 166, 239. 
Grand Commun, Cafe du, 145, 

146. 
Green Basket, The, 41, 42, 43, 

44, 45. 
Gresset, Jean Baptiste, 46, 47, 48. 
Grimaldi, Nicolini, 292. 
Gu^negand, Theatre, 335. 
Guerbois, Caf6, 174, 175, 176. 
Guise, Duke of, 64. 

Hawkins, Frederick, 323, 327. 
Hubert, Jacques Ren^, 112, 148. 
Renault, President, 208. 
Henry II, 16. 
Henry IV, 65, 66, 67, 181, 182, 

261, 268, 273. 
H6rault-S6chelles, Marie Jean, 

142, 311. 
" Homme k Deux Tetes." 295. 
H6pital de la Trinity, 317, 318, 

319. 
Horn, Count, 69. 
Hortensia Tavern, 72, 73, 74. 
Hotel Britannique, 84, 85, 86. 
Hotel de Bourgogne, 25, 321, 323, 

324, 325, 326, 333, 335, 337, 383. 



Hotel de Mod^ne, 51, 53, 54. 

Hdtel de la Providence, 78, 79, 80. 

Hotel de Ponthieu, 63. 

H6tel-de-Ville, 2. 

Hotel du Petit Bourbon, 330, 331. 

Hotel Homburg, 27. 

Hotel London, 55, 56, 57. 

Hotel Meurice, 87, 88, 89, 90. 

Hotel of the Senate, 90, 91. 

H6tel Russia, 58, 59. 

Hotel St. Quentin, 46, 47, 48, 49, 

50, 70. 
Houdaille, 228, 229. 
Howard, Ehza, 89, 90. 
Howell, James, 3, 6, 7, 9, 33. 
Hugo, Victor, 1, 2, 19, 31, 32, 121, 

135, 238. 
Hundred Years' War, 13. 

" Irene/' 108. 

Jacobins Club, 211, 212, 213, 214, 
215, 216, 218, 219, 220, 222, 224. 
James I, 36. 

Jardin d'Hiver, 262, 263. 
" Jeanne de Naples," 152. 
Jockey Club, 231, 232. 
Johnson, Samuel, 8, 9, 73, 188. 
" Journal to Stella," 208. 

Lacroix, Paul, 71, 303, 338. 
Lafayette, 309. 
La Fayette, Madame de, 193. 
La Fontaine, Jean de, 234, 235, 

236. 
La Harpe, Jean, 246, 247, 248. 
La Rochefoucauld, Frangois, Due 

de, 193. 
L'Arrivey, Pierre de, 33. 
Laurent, Caf6, 128. 
Law, John, 68. 
Laya, Jean Louis, 343, 346. 
Lebrun, Marie, 296, 297. 
Leclerc, Madame, 133. 
Lecouvreur, Adrienne, 340. 
Lefgvre, 132. 
Lepelletier, 141, 313. 
Le Sage, 135. 

Lespinasse, Julie, 204, 205, 206. 
Letter-writer, public, 279, 280. 
Lireux, 152, 153. 

Lister, Martin, 287, 289, 290, 296. 
Litteraire, Caf6, 166, 167. 
Longueville, Duchesse de, 187. 
Louis, St., 11. 



352 



Index 



Louis XI, 285. 

Louis XII, 16, 320, 321. 

Louis XIII, 38, 326, 339. 

Louis XIV, 40, 42, 190, 194, 195, 

291, 329, 330, 335, 336, 337, 338, 

339. 
Louis XV, 70,299,303,304. 
Louis XVI, 110, 1S7, 310. 
Louis Philippe, 61, 82, 83, 162, 

166, 178. 
Lubsac, M. de, 227. 
Luxembourg gardens, 49, 264, 265, 

267, 268, 269. 
Lytton, Lord, 145, 155. 

Mablv, Abbe de, 47, 48. 

Macaulay, Lord, 131, 132. 

Madrid, Cafe, 167, 168. 

Mag, The Fat, 24. 

Magny restaurant, 118, 119, 120, 

122, 123. 
Maintenon, Madame de, 37, 195, 

336, 337. 
Maire's Cafe, 166. 
Maison Dor^e, 154, 155. 
Manet, Edouard, 94, 154, 175, 176. 
" Mangin, L'illustre," 278. 
Mapinot restaurant, 149. 
Marais, Theatre du, 325, 326. 
Marat, Jean Paul, 78, 79, 80, 112, 

212 220 221 313. 
Marie-Antoinette, 72, 148, 304, 

305. 
Marmontel, Jean F., 199. 
" Marriage of Figaro, The," 110. 
Massenet, Jules, 41. 
Masse's restaurant, 141. 
Mazarin, Cardinal, 330, 338. 
Medici, Catherine de, 64. 
Medici, Marie de, 268. 
Moot's restaurant, 141, 142, 144. 
Mignard, Peter, 234. 
Mirabeau, Honor^ R., Comte de, 

211, 212. 
Moliere, Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 

234, 236, 237, 238, 326, 327, 32«, 

329, 330, 332, 339. 
Moli&re, Madame, 333, 334, 335. 
Momus, Caf6, 114, 116, 172, 174. 
Mondor, 274. 

Monstrelet, Engueraud de, 14. 
Montaigne, 3, 6. 
Montespan, Madame de, 194. 
Montesquieu, 8, 101, 102, 103, 

198, 202, 203, 224, 241, 265. 



Montijo, Mile, de, 90. 
Moore, George, 124, 151, 268. 
Moore, Dr. John, 15, 58, 69, 60, 

250, 251. 
Morias, Jean, 117. 
Mountebanks, 275, 276. 
Mule, The, 22, 23. 
Murger, Henry, 113, 114, 116, 135, 

156, 172, 174, 313. 
Mus6e Carnavalet, 30, 39, 178, 

192. 
Musset, Alfred de, 135, 145, 160. 

Napoleon I, 1, 110, 113, 125, 126, 

134, 135, 257. 
Napoleon III, 1, 89, 90. 
" Narcisse," 109. 
Necker, Jacques, 137, 138. 
Nerval, Gerard de, 94. 
Nicolet, Jean Baptiste, 292, 299. 
" Notre Dame," 2. 
Notre Dame, 284, 303, 313. 

Orleans, Philippe, Duke of (Re- 
gent), 196, 197, 338. 

Orleans, Duke of (Philippe Ega- 
lite), 130, 211, 249. 

Olearius, 97. 

Paine, Thomas, 75, 76. 

Paix, Caf6 de la, 169. 

" Palais Magique," 297. 

Palais Royal, 130, 131, 132, 136, 

138, 140, 141, 143, 144, 249, 331. 
Palais Royal gardens, 264. 
Palmerston, Lord, 158. 
Pantagruel, 33, 34, 35. 
Parent, John, 10. 
Paris, Caf6 de, 158, 159, 160, 161, 

162 231. 
" Paris Sketch-Book," 87. 
" Paris, The Mysteries of," 231. 
Pascal, 99, 283. 
Pellison, Paul, 191, 192. 
Percy, Sir Thomas de, 15. 
P6re Lunette tavern, 95. 
" Persian Letters," 101. 
Pestle, The, 22, 23. 
" Pilgrim, The Passing," 17, 55. 
Pineapple, The, 25, 31, 32, 33, 34, 

35, 36. 
Pleasure gardens in Paris, 240. 
Plutarch, 271. 
Pommed'Eve, 31, 32. 
Pomme de Pin, 25, 31, 33, 179, 181. 



Index 



353 



Pompadour, Madame de, 105. 
Pont Neuf, 102, 272, 273, 274. 
Pope, Alexander, 128, 186. 
Prior, Matthew, 4, 195. 
Procope, Cafe, 100, 105, 106, 108, 

109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 117, 124, 

127, 178. 
Procope, Frangois, 99, 104. 

Rabelais, Frangois, 34, 35. 
Racine, Jean, 234, 326. 
Raisin, 290, 291. 
Rambouillet, Hotel de, 182, 184, 

187, 188, 189, 190, 191. 
Rambouillet, Marquis de, 182. 
Rambouillet, Marquise de, 181, 

182, 183, 185, 206. 
" Rameau's Nephew," 131. 
Ramponeau, 71, 72, 299, 300. 
Rauwolf, Leonard, 96. 
Ravaillac, Frangois, 65, 66, 67, 81, 

83. 
Rlcamier, Madame, 310. 
Red Hat, The, 18, 19. 
Redoute Chinoise, 252, 254. 
Regency Cafe, 131, 132, 133, 134, 

135, 136, 145. 
Regnier, Mathurin, 33. 
Renaissance, 2. 
Renan, Ernest, 122, 123. 
Riche, Caf6, 154, 155, 156. 
Richelieu, Cardinal, 130, 231, 233. 
Robespierre, Maximilien M. I., 

112, 120, 121, 134, 147, 148, 212. 

213, 215, 224, 313. 
Rochelle, Four Sergeants of, 61. 
Rocher de Cancale, 170. 
Rock of Cancale, 171, 172. 
Rogers, Samuel, 340, 341. 
Ronsard, 33. 
Rossini, 153. 
Rotonde, Cafd, 114, 116. 
Rousseau, Jean Baptiste, 127, 128. 
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 48, 49, 

50, 51, 70, 108, 109, 135, 145, 

147, 206, 268. 
Royal Drummer, The, 71, 72. 
Royal Hotel, 81, 82. 
Ruskin, John, 87, 88. 

Saint- Amant, 184. 
Sainte-Beuve, Charles A., 118, 

120, 121, 202, 238. 
Saint-Pierre, Ahh6 de, 208. 
Saint-Victor, Paul de, 119, 122. 



Salis, Rodolphe, 177, 178. 

Salomon, Jean, 273. 

Salon, the, and its origin, 179, 180, 

181. 
Sandys, George, 97. 
Santerre, Antoine Joseph, 72, 73, 

74, 75, 345. 
Sardou, Victorien, 264. 
Scarron, Madame, 193, 194. 
Scarron, Paul, 193. 
Schanne, Alexandre, 114, 172. 
" Scrivain PubUc," 279, 280. 
Scudery, Mile, de, 179, 188, 189, 

190, 191, 192, 193. 
" Semiramis," 105, 106, 107. 
Sevigne, Madame de, 191, 192, 

193. 
Shield of Alengon, The, 17. 
Shield of Brittany, The, 17. 
Shield of France, The, 17, 18. 
Sieyes, E. J., Comte, 211, 212. 
Signs, inn and tavern, 28, 29, 30, 

125. 
Silver Tower, The, 124, 125, 126. 
Sirat, M., 228, 229. 
Smith, Sydney, 6, 7. 
" Spectacle Hydrauhque," 294. 
Sterne, Laurence, 51, 52, 53, 54, 

55, 294, 295. 
Straw Castle, The, 15. 
Street characters of Paris, 271, 

272. 
Street cries of Paris, 281, 282. 
Sue, Eugene, 161, 231, 232. 

Tabarin, 273, 274, 275. 

Talleyrand, 309. 

Tencin, Claudine de, 197, 198, 199. 

Terrail, Andr^, 126. 

Terre's eating-house, 162, 163, 

164. 
Thackeray, W. M., 87, 158, 162. 
Th6ophile, 38. 
Th^venot, Jean de, 98. 
Three Pigeons, The, 65, 66, 67, 68, 

81. 
Tivoli gardens, 257, 258, 259, 260, 

261, 262. 
Tooth-doctors, 277. 
Tonny, M., 84, 85, 86. 
Torre, the sieur, 242, 243, 244, 245, 

264. 
Torre's Vauxhall, 244, 245, 246, 

251. 
Tortoni, Caf^, 151, 152, 153, 154. 



354 



Index 



Tour d'Argent, 124, 125, 126. 
Tourgueneff, Ivan, 239. 
Trois Freres Provengaux, 144, 145. 
Truands, cabaret of, 20, 21. 
Tuileries, 2, 147, 148, 264, 265, 

266, 267, 268. 
Turkish Cafe, 178. 

Vachette, Caf6, 116, 117, 118. 
Vandam, Albert D., 93, 152, 155, 

159, 160, 168, 232. 
" Vanity Fair," 158. 
Vari6tes, Cafe des, 167. 
Vasseur, Theresa La, 50, 51. 
Venua's restaurant, 147, 148, 149. 
Verlaine, Paul, 113. 
Vernet, Antoine Charles, 139. 
Vary's restaurant, 140. 
Villon, Frangois, 22, 23, 32, 42, 

43, 44, 45, 86, 177. 
Vivonne, Catherine de, 181. 
Voison's restaurant, 150. 



Voiture, Vincent, 186, 187, 188. 
Voltaire, 5,' 105, 106, 107, 108, 135, 

202, 203, 241, 274, 300, 301, 

326, 340. 

Walpole, Horace, 5, 9, 56, 100, 
180, 201, 203, 204, 225. 

Waterloo, battle of, 158. 

Wharton, Philip, Duke of, 128, 
129, 130. 

White Horse, The, 39, 40, 41. 

White's Hotel, 75, 76, 77. 

Winter Vauxhall, 246, 248, 249, 
250, 251. 

Wooden Sword, The, 68, 69. 

Young, Arthur, 6, 7, 9, 136, 249, 
265. 

Zola, Emile, 150, 151, 156, 157, 
176, 239. 









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